THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S MAIN CAMPUS IS SITUATED ON TREATY 6 TERRITORY AND THE HOMELAND OF THE MÉTIS.
THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S MAIN CAMPUS IS SITUATED ON TREATY 6 TERRITORY AND THE HOMELAND OF THE MÉTIS.
VANCOUVER ”“ What is there to do after more than two weeks of Olympics in Vancouver when you have become too broke, too partied-out and too bored to watch any more CTV figure skating highlight re-runs?
Downloading and watching a borderline sappy Olympics-themed movie is the remedy, of course. In this case, the 1993 Disney film Cool Runnings.
Not only does the film feature the entertaining antics of the late Canadian actor, the jovial John Candy, but Cool Runnings is also historically informative. In case you missed out on what was one of the better non-animated Disney movies of the ’90s, Cool Runnings is partially based on the true story of the first Jamaican bobsledding team to compete in the Olympics.
When revisiting Cool Running’s documentation of Jamaica’s breakthrough onto the international bobsledding scene at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, it made me wonder where the Jamaican bobsledding presence at the Whistler Sliding Center for Vancouver’s Games was.
A quick Internet visit to the Jamaican bobsledding homepage will tell you the island bobsledding dream is still alive — and you better believe it mon.
Though the Green, Black and Gold sledding squad failed to qualify for Turin in 2006 and Vancouver’s Olympics, they still compete at an international level.
It sounds fantastical that a country with about as much sand as Canada has snow would be able to competitively perform a winter sport like bobsledding. However, bobsledding’s Caribbean roots actually have a rational explanation and they come in the form of a wooden box on wheels.
Pushcart derbies have been a Jamaican hobby for decades. A pushcart is much like an all-terrain version of a winter bobsled and combined with Jamaican’s renowned ability in the area of sprinting, their transition to bobsledding isn’t all that unbelievable.
So when some wealthy Americans who had business and family ties to Jamaica witnessed and were confounded by a pushcart derby, the Jamaican bobsledding dream was born.
The 1988 Olympic four-man Jamaican bobsled team consisted of a team with a significant military background — the likely source of the grittiness and determination that fuelled a previously unimaginable dream.
The one thing I did recall from my childhood viewing of Cool Runnings was near the end of the film where the four Jamaicans brutally crashed and then hoisted their sled over their shoulders, carrying it over the finish line. It turns out that part holds up factually, and the film uses actual footage from the ’88 Olympics to document the icy spill.
After impressing the bobsledding community by improving all week long at the ’88 Olympics, the Jamaican team unfortunately did not officially finish because of their crash. They went on to again qualify for the ’92 Olympics in France and had their most remarkable cameo on the international bobsledding stage when they placed 14th in the ’94 Lillehammer Olympic Games in Norway.
Unfortunately 2006 and 2010 have been disappointments for the Jamaican bobsledding team but look for the possibility of the Jamaicans making a return in the future. With the multitude of advancements in travel, technology, sports nutrition, science, training and rehabilitation, Sochi in 2014 could be the qualifying ticket for Jamaica.
However, Chris Stokes, four-time Olympian and founding member of the original bobsled team, was on-hand in Whistler from Feb. 12 to 28 as a guest speaker at Jamaica’s Whistler pavilion to share the inspirational history of his team’s origins.
As for Canada’s four-man bobsled team of Lyndon Rush, Chris Le Bihan, David Bissett and Lascelles Brown, they attained bronze status on Feb. 27 in Vancouver.
The two-man Canadian women’s bobsledding team of Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse won gold, while Helen Upperton and Shelley-Ann Brown won silver.
Bringing the prairie thunder to Vancouver, Rush, a Humboldt, Sask., native and University of Saskatchewan Huskies football alumnus, played a crucial role and was responsible for piloting the Canadian Olympic team to a medal.
It’s laudable that Rush and Brown, whose crash in two-man bobsleigh on Feb. 20 concerned and worried Canadian fans, were able to overcome the rigid corners of Whistler Sliding Centre when it mattered most.
Hats off to both our Maple Leaf and the Jamaican bobsledders because as Cool Runnings illustrates, bobsledding is the fastest, iciest rollercoaster you’ve ever been on — and simply, you must be athletically insane to participate.
A pithy John Candy quote from Cool Runnings will conclude what unfortunately will be one of the last bobsledding articles many will see for the next four years: “Always remember, your bones will not break in a bobsled. No, no, no. They shatter.”
Don’t worry — 2014 Sochi Olympic bobsledding will be here quicker than you can say “Are you dead mon?”