Lebanese ski champion Jackie Chamoun posed nude on snow during a session taken by six-time Mexican Olympic skier Prince Hubertus von Hohenlohe, for a calendar featuring skiers and models posing topless on ski resorts around the world.
You know Jackie Chamoun, she’s a Beirut native recently profiled by NBC for defying the odds to compete at the Sochi Winter Olympics. In Vancouver in 2010, she finished 54th in the women’s slalom event.
The Jackie Chamoun photo-session isn’t regarded too highly of across a few Lebanese media channels. As this is a SFW site, all the pics you’ll see here are SFW. This video has some NSFW elements, but it’s only NSFW in America, if you’re reading this in Western Europe, it’s fine. And it’s on YouTube, and you know that YouYube had moderate to strict filtering. The Jackie Chamoun calendar photos come from Beiruiting.com (see the whole shoot there)
There’s nothing really racy or risque here, or anything that hasn’t been done by an athlete before. However, Jackie Chamoun is from a culture that’s rather conservative, so she issued a post on her Facebook page where she apologized, saying the photos wrongly reflect the conservative culture in Lebanon.
“I just want to make it clear to everyone who commented, shared the photos that appeared on the net in Lebanon yesterday,” Jackie Chamoun said.
“Yes I did photos for an Austrian ski calendar with other professional athletes 3 years ago. The photos of the photoshoot are not like the actual images that are now circulating on the net. The video and photos that you are now seeing are part of the making off, the preparation, it wasn’t supposed to go public. Anyways, I want to apologize to all of you, I know that Lebanon is a conservative country and this is not the image that reflects our culture. I fully understand if you want to criticise this.
Now that I’m at the Olympic Games, these photos that I never saw before are being shared. It is sad. All I can ask to each of you who saw this, is to stop spreading it, it will really help me focusing on what is really important now: my trainings and race.”
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An MBA and Fulbright scholar, he’s also a frequent analyst on news talk radio; with regular segments on ESPN,NBC, CBS and Fox. A former NBC Chicago and Washington Times writer, he’s also been featured on the History Channel. President Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)