There are 24 tropical nations competing in the Winter Olympics as of 2012. 'Tropical' in this case refers to specific countries from Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Carribbean and Central and South America. You can see a full list here. If you add subtropical nations the list is longer, of course; and more countries can be added at any time; for example, Singapore may be joining for 2014.

Despite so many tropical countries taking part, they are still waiting to win any medals. This isn't surprising if you think of the sports practised at the Winter Olympics: They are all cold-weather sports, and so of course it's very hard to achieve excellence in these sports if your country has little or no snow and facilities for practising such sports are limited or non-existent. So far the only tropical nation to have participated in the Winter Paralympics is Uganda, which sent one skiier in 1976 and 1980; he later took Norwegian citizenship.