Cool Runnings The Bobsleigh Story»
As well a being the Caribbean’s leader in terms of achievements in the principal sport of Track and Field Athletics at the Olympic Summer Games, Jamaica has in the last decade pioneered participation by the region at the Olympic Winter Games: Jamaica entered the XVth Olympic Winter Games at Calgary, Canada in 1988. The sport involved was Bobsleigh and Jamaica ambitiously entered in both the two-man and four- man events.
Jamaica’s forty-year participation in the Olympic Games and over fifty years of affiliation with the international Olympic Committee allowed the newly formed Jamaica Bobsleigh Federation to nominate the teams through the Jamaica Olympic Association once the affiliation with the International Federation of Bobsleigh and Tobagonning had been secured. The Jamaican Federation had come about through the interest and efforts of two American businessmen, George Fitch and William Mahoney, who were both resident in Jamaica at the time.
Fitch and Mahoney were not only aware of Jamaica’s great sprinting tradition on the track but they had also noted the agility of the young men and boys using the push- carts common in the urban areas as displayed at an annual Push –Cart Derby put on by the Kaiser Bauxite Company, the US multi-national. Two elements of the sport of Bobsleigh were therefore already present to challenge an adventurous group of young men, most of who were in the Jamaican armed services, the Jamaican Defense Force (JDF).
At Calgary the team quickly became a media sensation for its novelty, coming from one of the most celebrated tropical tourist destinations in the world. The two-man team of Michael White and Dudley “Tal” Stokes finished down the field, but these two along with Devon Harris and Tal’s brother Chris Stokes shocked everyone by posting the seventh fastest starting time in the four-man event in the third of four runs. On the fourth run, however, the sleigh crashed “ spectacularly” according to one account at the time. This added to the media excitement which eventually led not only to the team being used in a television commercial in the United States for Miller Light beer- an opportunity normally reserved only for major sporting superstars or very colourful characters- but also the fictional version of the team’s efforts and origins, Walt Disney film “Cool Runnings” (a title taken, incidentally, from one of the songs of the great Jamaican reggae composer and singer, Bob Marley who became as popular on the African continent as elsewhere in the world and also produced a son, Rohan, who became a collegiate football star in Florida).
The team attracted less publicity by the time the 1992 Olympic Winter Games came around at Albertville, France. There were two Jamaican teams in the two-man bob which both finished down the pack but the four-man as usual performed more respectably in 24th place. Ricky McIntosh, a physical education teacher, had joined the group by this time. Like Chris Stokes, who just missed making the finals of the Jamaican athletics Olympic trials in the 100 metres for the 1988 Summer Games in an effort to compete at both the Summer and the Winter Games, McIntosh was also a good sprinter, running as a member of one of the country’s top club teams-the Jambisco squad- in the 4 x 100 event at various meets.
After 1992 the International Olympic Committee moved to carry out the decision that it had taken earlier to move the Olympic Winter Games on to a different cycle from the Summer Games in order both to increase the television revenue pool and to make it easier on their own staff and committee members.
The first Winter Games on the new cycle were thus held at Lillehammer, Norway in 1994 after just a two-year gap – meaning also that the Centennial Summer Games at Atlanta in 1996 will stand out on their own for the first time. The squad now included the Stokes brothers who became the first three- time Winter Olympians for their country, joining the few Jamaicans who have achieved or surpassed that distinction at the Summer Games (notably the great sprinters Don Quarrie and Merlene Ottey).
The other members of the squad were Ricky McIntosh and Jerome Lewis-both of whom had also been on the 1992 squad-and two new men: Winston Watt, a soldier like some of the original members, and Wayne Thomas, a machinist. The team had as its coach the Canadian Sam Bock who was rated by many experts as the best push start coach in the world. The team was also able to benefit from some special training in the Eastern section of Germany. The results were seen at Lillehammer after an initial disappointment when the two-man team were disqualified for being overweight (Bob-sleigh being a sport with weight regulations like the “mat” sports and horse- racing).
After the second day, in which it had finished tenth in that day’s runs, beating the Swiss and one of the Italians teams, the team entered the elite “Top Fifteen” of the sport by finishing fourteenth overall – beating, among others, outstanding countries at the Winter Olympics like the United States, France and Russia.
Since Lillehammer the team has won bronze medals in a couple of important international competitions as it looks towards the Olympic Winter Games at Nagano, Japan in 1998. Another edition of this book fairly early in the 21st century may well have some of the Jamaica Winter Olympic competitors joining the heroes of the Summer Games on the list of medal-winners.