On Monday, it was announced that Jamaica had qualified a 2-Man team for the Sochi Olympics - their first Olympics since 2002. If you've followed any of my past Olympic adventures, you will know that Bobsled is my favorite Winter Olympic sport. My love of the Olympic sliding sports, particular Bobsled, was born during the Calgary Olympics in 1988. This was the Games of the Olympic Tourist because of the exploits of people like brick layer, and part-time ski jumper, "Eddie the Eagle" Edwards from Great Britain. But there was no more popular group of Olympic Tourists than the Jamaican Bobsled team, later immortalized in the movie Cool Runnings.
We actually had tickets to the finals of the 2-man bobsled in Calgary and were eagerly looking forward to seeing whether the Jamaicans would be able to beat the other non-traditional teams from Mexico, Netherland Antilles, New Zealand and the US Virgin Islands. Unfortunately, the Chinook winds started blowing and the air temperature rose to around 48F. The combination caused dust to lodge in the starting grooves at the top of the course and melted the track at the bottom. I think that the Jamaicans had just made their 3rd run when the event was called off and rescheduled for the following day. We had tickets to other events the next day so missed seeing the final two runs with the Jamaica-I sled of driver Dudley Stokes and brakeman Michael White finishing 30th out of 38 and beating all of the non-tradition teams except the one from the Netherland Antilles.
I certainly enjoyed the speed of the sliding sports, but what I really enjoyed was that these sports were entry points for participation into the Winter Olympics by countries that were decidedly winter deficient. After all, there are only a few handfuls of these sliding tracks throughout the world and athletes, whether from wintery climes or tropical ones, have to travel to these tracks to train. From my point-of-view, more participation surely means more interest in the Winter Olympics and that has to be a good thing.
But these non-traditional teams face tremendous odds trying to break into these sports. First, there is the issue of equipment. I am sure that traditional Bobsled power Germany probably spends more money on a pair of runners for a luge or bobsled than the Jamaicans spend on all of their equipment. Likewise, the US Bobsled team's sponsorship deal with BMW-USA brought them six brand new state-of-the-art bobsleds worth much more than $100,000 a piece while the Jamaicans and many other teams are working with hand-me-down sleds. There is also training. In the US or Russia or Germany or Canada, bobsled training is their job. For Jamaica and the other non-traditional teams, the athletes have to earn enough doing something else to survive and raise the money their team needs for equipment, uniforms and coaches.
So, it was no surprise when I read that in order to qualify for Sochi, 46 year old Jamaican driver Winston Watts had spent $160,000 of his own money and needed to raise another $80,000 in 3 weeks in order to get his team to Sochi. But then a miracle happened: Jamaican Bobsled fundraising appeared on three crowd sourcing websites. For those of you not aware of such things, crowd sourcing is a way to use the internet to raise a little money from a lot of people to fund an idea (or dream) rather than trying to find a few people with a lot of money. And boy, did people like Winston's dream: in less than two days, the Jamaicans raised more than $190,000!
So on February 16th and 17th, while I will be rooting for USA-I driver Steve Holcomb to win the first US gold medal in 2-man bobsled since 1936, I'll also be rooting for Winston Watts to show the world that he and his teammate Marvin Dixon are just as deserving of the title Olympian as any other athlete in Sochi.
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