Beyond Cool Runnings: Iconic Jamaican bobsledder launches NFT collection

Two years ago, when Nelson Christian Stokes was honoured by the Jamaican government for his contribution to the development of sport in the country, his wife organised an event to celebrate the achievement. On the invitation, in Latin, she’d had inscribed, ‘Non nobis nati sumus’.

“My wife recognised something in me that I hadn’t recognised in myself,” says the four-time Winter Olympian, who received the Order of Distinction in the rank of Officer, Jamaica’s sixth highest honour. In English, the inscription read, “Not for ourselves were we born”.

The now 57-year-old Stokes has spent a lifetime utilising his sport for the greater good, having originally become part of Olympic folklore for his role as one of the quartet of Jamaican bobsledders who competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. The foursome’s underdog story was immortalised – loosely – in Disney's film, Cool Runnings. An entertaining feel-good tale, but not the true story, says Stokes, who wrote the book Cool Runnings and Beyond: The Story of the Jamaica Bobsleigh Team, in order to document what really happened.

"The film does a good job at conveying the meaning and the struggles that we went through and the sense of triumph but it is not the facts of the story," he tells Olympics.com. "I'm in a position where I have a duty to write the story, as a Jamaican, to write our own history ourselves with my own hand, and it's not coming from Los Angeles, it's not coming from Hollywood, it's not somebody else's interpretation, it is from the front row, and I think that is so important in terms of claiming your own story and telling your own story because otherwise somebody else tells it and they tell what they think."

Stokes went on to compete in three more Olympic Winter Games and by the time he retired from competitive action at Nagano 1998, a decade after first stepping on the ice at the last minute to replace an injured team-mate, he was president of the Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, a role he continues to this day.

“It was a little strange to me, how popular the team was and the warmth with which we were received after, for example, the crash on the third run of the four-man,” Stokes says. “It was not until much later that I came to understand what Jamaican bobsled meant to the people – at this time and at that time and continues to mean – it's the finest part of the Olympic Movement.

“It's to compete well, it's to participate, it's to compete with honour… As a young athlete, I wanted to win but one of the things that the Olympic Movement understands about athleticism in the world is that it goes beyond performance on the field of play – it inspires people. It sets an example for people and that is what we did, so I'm very clear on that now.”

Standing on the shoulders of giants

The inspirational philosophy behind Jamaica’s bobsleigh team of daring, courageousness, persistence, and claiming your place on Earth – which Stokes also talks about in his additional role as motivational speaker – is the thread that continues throughout his continued work with the team, and in his role as a fintech entrepreneur.

“When I speak now about Jamaica bobsleigh, I don't speak about the Jamaican bobsleigh team, I speak about the Jamaica bobsleigh movement... It's not time on the ice, it's an idea that regardless of where you're from or your circumstances or who your parents were, that, in a very real sense, not just a purity, in a very real sense, you can move yourself into other places, you can make more of yourself.

“I mean, I'm talking to you now, and I'm looking out across the city of Kingston to Kingston Harbour, the seventh largest natural harbour in the world and out to the Caribbean Sea and there's nothing in my environment – except for the fact that I'm on a mountain – but there's nothing in my environment that would suggest that Jamaica should be in bobsleigh.”

In 1988, it was the then-president of the Jamaica Olympic Association, Mike Fennell, “an outstanding Jamaican”, says Stokes, who had the vision to back a Jamaica bobsleigh team and it is Fennell’s influence that Stokes has been building on ever since.

“I will always be known as a member of the Jamaican bobsleigh team. I could walk away now and that would carry me far but I feel a sense of duty to do what Mike Fennell did when he gave us an opportunity. I have a sense of duty that you need to keep the door open for somebody else and let their challenge be something else. Don't let them have to do over what you did. In other words, let them build on top of your brick, let them stand on top of your shoulder, not start over. Well, I did it so you can do it. No, that's not how we build a culture of excellence in business or a culture of excellence in sports.”

Stokes’ business persona very much works under the same parameters of his Jamaica bobsleigh ideal, having spent 20 years in banking, specialising in helping the unbanked and underbanked, under the proviso: “Can you do well by doing good? And the answer is yes, yes you can. And if you're going to spend energy somewhere, for me, that is a good place to spend energy and that's how I've decided to pass my days – not only in business, but also in sport”.

Entrepreneurial flair

The idea for the NFT – a non-fungible token – came from British sponsorship agent, Rohan Midha, who had been retained to fundraise for the team. An NFT is a way to own and monetise digital collectibles, among other things, by leaving a digital blockchain trail that proves ownership. So, what with Stokes being in the fintech space, keen to claim ownership of the Jamaica brand and philosophy, and flexing his entrepreneurial mind, his eyes lit up.

“I can package and sell my own intellectual property, my own brand, in a market that is developing… The idea of a blockchain that establishes ownership, proprietorship that traces it over time, I think, is absolutely invaluable, it's revolutionising things now. It's revolutionising banking, contract law, property law and now sport in every area.”

The NFT Collection for Jamaica Bobsleigh’s Winter 2022 Olympics Return contains 1,988 pieces – commemorating Jamaica’s first year in the sport 1988 – and it offers a combination of outright purchases and auction pieces.

Each collectible is a Jamaican-themed bobsleigh, wrapped in works of digital 3D art and combined with music by local artists such as Tony Rebels, with designs by renowned artists in the NFT space such as Gabe Weis.

Before clarity comes chaos

Stokes knows it’s a gamble but he’s confident it will work in raising the additional £150,000 he needs to enable his two teams to get through the qualification process.

“I have a plaque in my office here that says all great change starts with chaos and I think we're seeing chaos now, in blockchain and cryptocurrency, but it's still a great change that is coming.

“That is what we did in '88, and you know what? We crashed, it was chaos. It blew up. But we came back six years later in Lillehammer, Norway and we placed 14th in the Olympic Games overall, including beating the United States and Italy and all kinds of big sleds.

"We came back in 2002 and set an Olympic start record. In 2018 we had our first female team in the Olympics. So what have I learnt in life and what have I tried to pass on to athletes and personnel? It's okay to fail at first, it's okay to go through the chaos."

Stokes also believes that NFTs could be a game-changer for other National Olympic Committees and federations of lower-profile sports and is happy to share what he learns from the process.

“Why should this magnificent tool, which is a great democratiser of monetisation of brands, only belong again to the big guys? It belongs to us, too…

“A big part of creating success is that there's a flip side to that that nobody wants to talk about, which is that you're probably going to fail seven times before you get that success. Nobody wants to do that, right? We're more comfortable doing what we know was done already. But that's not my role on the Earth, that is not Jamaica bobsleigh's role on the earth. Our role is to say, when the question is asked, who will lead this, we will say, ‘We will’.

So Stokes's journey didn't end with the closing credits of the film or the last chapters of his book, it is ongoing, a life's work, all based on that first foray onto the ice.

“First of all, I had the courage to get in the sport and then those who dig a little deeper say b), we did well in the sport, and c), most importantly, we continue to be in the sport. I think that has inspired a lot of people, and I accept the responsibility of sharing that idea and beyond just helping people become Olympians, help them to be champions in their personal lives, and I spend a lot of time doing that.”

Nelson Christian Stokes – not for himself was he born.

Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 run from 4-20 February – check here for schedule details.