From Jamaica's toughest town to the Winter Olympics: This is Nimroy Turgott’s amazing story

Jamaican bobsledder Nimroy Turgott triumphed over significant adversity to take his place at Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

Turgott is from August Town, Kingston - one of the toughest and most deprived areas on the Caribbean island, where gang murders and other criminal activity are the norm. Trouble on the streets was almost unavoidable for Turgott, but that's not all.

Growing up, he contracted an illness that meant he losing parts of his memory, and struggled to complete the simplest of tasks in the classroom.

“I couldn’t even spell the word ‘if’ in fifth grade,” he told Olympics.com.

“People even started calling me 'If'. But I got away with it because of my sporting abilities.”

The boy with memory loss was the fastest runner in his school, which in Jamaica is really saying something.

Turgott joined the prestigious MVP Track & Field Club to develop his talent, would go on to set a personal best 100m time of 10.13 seconds, and even trained with former world record holder Asafa Powell.

Recruited by a Jamaican bobsleigh legend

After running at the Jamaican national trials in 2017, Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation President Nelson "Chris" Stokes - who competed in the four-man sled at Calgary 1988 and whose journey was immortalised by the film Cool Runnings - asked Turgott to try his sport.

“I wasn’t interested at first because I was doing pretty well in track and field, but then I thought to myself, ‘This is an opportunity to represent Jamaica’ - and I couldn’t turn it down,” the Turgott revealed.

“It also helped that I had a high school and university teammate who had already joined the [Jamaican bobsleigh] team in Carrie Russell who was doing very well.

“I flew to Whistler, and the next day I was in a bobsleigh. The experience was scary at first and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into - but I enjoyed my first run and never looked back.”

Being noticed by Queen Elizabeth

Stokes helped his new recruit secure a Solidarity Scholarship, which allowed him to focus on training. But despite having a positive new direction in life, the journey was far from simple.

After Turgott and his new teammates failed by a whisker to qualify their sled for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, the pandemic meant that the Jamaican team were separated in different countries, and couldn't train in their normal facilities.

But the brakeman, who relocated to the UK to train with new pilot Shanwayne Stephens, decided not to let that not even the coronavirus would hinder their Olympic ambitions.

The pair started pushing a Mini around their Peterborough base, and videos of their eccentric training regime quickly went viral.

“After the gyms had shut, we thought about how to replicate the training the coach wanted us to do,” Turgott continued.

“So we just tried pushing the car and it worked! We also built some weights out of cement, which we used in the garden. It was a crazy experience.

“I have a brotherly relationship with Shanwayne. We stuck by each other. I believed in his ability and he encouraged me and motivated me to stay behind him.”

Stephens even spoke to Queen Elizabeth on a video call about their unorthodox methods.

This moment, if nothing else demonstrated just how far Turgott had come from the mean streets of August Town.

But Turgott’s history almost derailed that dream.

Due to reasons from his past - the full details of which can't be disclosed - he wasn’t granted a visa to compete in the USA. Not only did this mean that he had fewer opportunities to improve and practise with the team, but with five of Jamaica’s eight Olympic qualification races held in the United States, it greatly affected their chances of progressing to Beijing 2022.

“Nimroy is from one of the most historically violent places in Jamaica and we had all kinds of problems with him. He couldn’t get the visa to race in the USA, but he did race in Canada and in Europe," Stokes told Olympics.com

With time running out and the nation’s largest ever bobsleigh team desperate to put on a competitive display in China, nobody would have blamed Stokes for replacing Nimroy in the team. But that simply wasn’t an option.

“You don't give up on a young man,” Stokes continued firmly.

“Our young people are at risk. They are dying. They're being killed. They're getting into gangs. They're losing their way.

"But there is another path. Tell the kid on the street to come to training, find somewhere safe for them to stay and sort it out that way.

“It would have been the easiest thing to say that's too inconvenient [to keep Turgott in the team], we need to keep the team together.

"But we stuck with him. He became the national push champion in Jamaica and I said, “Nimroy, stay in condition.” Eventually we got him on a flight with the team as soon as we could.”

Creating ripples of change in Jamaica

Stokes' trust in Turgott paid off, and he was able to compete alongside pilot Shanwayne Stephens in the two-man event.

They finished last, but given the difficulty of their journey to get to the Games, their presence at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre alone was a sizeable victory that transcended beyond sport.

“Competing at the Olympics taught me that I am strong and brave and also that I can inspire a lot of young people around the world. To me, that is the most important thing. We didn't win a medal, but we definitely won a lot of heart.

“No matter what, no matter what the obstacles are, no matter where you are from, once you put your mind to something and you're determined enough to go for that goal, you can achieve it.

“All you have to do is set small goals to meet that big goal that you want to accomplish.

“Sports can take your mind away from doing that negative stuff. It's important because you're going to stay healthy, you're going to stay fit. Your mind is going to be free from negative stuff.”

Stokes echoed this sentiment, highlighting that Turgott’s appearance would turn him into a role model for children growing up in similar circumstances to his own.

“It's changed his life," the four-time Olympian continued.

“Somebody in his community in Jamaica has seen him on television. Nimroy from next door has become an important man, and he's chosen a different path.

“You drop a pebble in the pond and you don't know where the ripples go. And it's not for you to know where the ripples go, but you need to start them.”

Nimroy Turgott: Making the best banana bread in the world

Turgott’s life had transformed both on and off the ice.

When he’s not training (on the ice, on the road or in the gym) in pursuit of making the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, he’s putting his food technology degree to work.

_“_I am going to start my banana bread business and put it on a global level, because I obviously make the best banana bread in the world!” he said with a huge smile.

“I want people to taste the passion that I put into my banana bread.

“I also want to start a rabbit farm because based on research, they reproduce even faster than chickens and the meat is very healthy.”

Saving starfish, and young people's lives in Jamaica

Turgott’s story is a reminder of how sport can change lives.

But in order for this to happen there must also be hard work, dedication, and the support of others.

One of Stokes’ core missions post-Beijing 2022 in addition to producing Olympic medallists, is to create outreach programmes in Jamaica that bring kids into sport.

One idea is to partner with a major Caribbean tour operator to take children from Jamaica to Lake Placid - only a six-hour flight - to watch bobsleigh and create interest through an exciting live experience.

Plans are already underway to create a new national pushcart championship, which is already a popular pursuit on the island. All the parish champions would then be brought in to trial for the national bobsleigh team.

In this way, the next Olympian like Nimroy Turgott may be unearthed. But more importantly, people from unprivileged and ignored communities will receive the tools they need to turn their lives around and build a better future.

“Sport is the tool for swimming upstream,” Stokes said.

“Maybe you lose more people than you save. But my mom always tells this story when I get frustrated: Millions of starfish on the beach get stranded and are about to die, but somebody picks one up and throws it back in the water. Somebody tells them they’re wasting their time as there are too many to save. But the process has made a difference to that one.

_“_I hope Nimroy’s story will help somebody else.”