TIME-LIFE the Olympics by The Editors of TIME-LIFE

Author:The Editors of TIME-LIFE
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liberty Street
Published: 2016-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

RARE AIR Edwards competed in the ski jump at the Calgary Games, finishing in last place in both events he entered. The high winds made the conditions especially dangerous, and organizers tried to convince the inexperienced Edwards to sit out.

The Jamaican Bobsledding Team

A whimsical dream became Olympic reality when a group of athletes from a tropical island showed what it could achieve on ice.

…

It all started with a dare. In 1987, American George Fitch, a member of the Foreign Service who worked in Jamaica, bet a friend he could find a winter sport in which local athletes could excel. Jamaicans were already world-class competitors in sports like track and field, so why couldn’t they do well in other sports too? So what if the temperatures on the island nation rarely dipped lower than the high 70s?

After attending a pushcart derby, in which contestants race homemade street-vendor carts, Fitch found his answer. Jamaica had plenty of athletes who possessed the lower-body strength and speed that would make them naturals at bobsledding, which requires strong push starts. Fitch put up his own money and decided to assemble a team. He first approached soldiers at the Jamaican Defence Force headquarters and found three stars: Dudley Stokes, a helicopter pilot who became the team captain, and Devon Harris and Michael White, both strong runners. He also recruited railway locomotive driver Samuel Clayton and student Caswell Allen, who later was injured and was replaced by Stokes’s brother, Chris. Rounding out the team was electrician and part-time reggae singer Frederick Powell. “I saw this thing on TV, and I said to myself, ‘Hey, mon, I got to do this thing. I never saw snow,’ ” Powell told People magazine before the Games.

American Howard Siler, a two-time Olympian as a bobsledder and a former U.S. national coach, was hired as their coach, and in September, the team set off for Lake Placid, New York. The Mount Van Hoevenberg run was the men’s first taste of the ice and snow. It was also terrifying. After a slippery start and an early crash, the team began to improve rapidly.

They passed an important hurdle in December 1987. The international federation required the Jamaicans to participate in a World Cup race. They finished a surprising 35th out of 41 nations, qualifying for the Calgary Games. The stage was set for Jamaica’s debut, and the world tuned in to watch the fun-loving bobsledders from the country that didn’t know snow.

It was an inauspicious beginning. The four-man team crashed, while the two-man team finished 30th. Yet the Jamaicans did not give up on the sport. The country participated in the 1992 Games in Albertville, and has competed in six Olympics, including the 2014 Sochi Games.

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