Cool Runnings slider Chris Stokes: Pushcart championships the key to unlocking Jamaica bobsleigh talent

When the Jamaican bobsleigh team took to the track at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, comparisons with the "Cool Runnings" team of Calgary 1988 were inevitable.

After all, the 1993 Hollywood film titled after the nickname given to their sled was a box office hit and remains immensely popular today.

But the reality is that the Caribbean nation’s athletes who competed at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre over the past two weeks are an entirely different proposition to the team of 34 years ago.

“We’re more than a movie, and we’re more than just participants,” Chris Stokes told Olympics.com in China.

He was part of that 1988 team and is now the CEO and Chairman of the Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation.

“Our aim is to be very good at this sport," Stokes shared.

“We have a programme now that recruits and develops bobsleigh athletes. We are trying to get to an inflection point. We're trying to become a top-10 nation in the World Cup all the time. And yes, it's not beyond us because we think we have the talent to get on the podium.”

Obstacles Jamaica bobsleigh must overcome

Stokes’ point about the evolution and improvement of the programme is supported by statistics.

At Beijing 2022, Jamaica fielded entries in three bobsleigh events for the first time in Olympic history - the two-man and four-man sleds, and the women’s monobob.

But one theme that remains as true today as it did 24 years ago in Calgary is the uphill battle to compete with richer nations in what is a very expensive sport.

Chris Stokes: Diversity a cornerstone of the Olympic Movement

While Germany and the United States - two countries with comparatively huge sliding sports budgets compared to their rivals - won 10 out of the 12 bobsleigh medals on offer at Beijing 2022, diversity is improving.

Four out of the six athletes that stood on the two-woman podium in China were black, including the legendary Elana Meyers Taylor who became the most decorated female bobsledder in Olympic history with five medals. Stokes is clear that the importance of these images cannot be understated.

The next step in bobsleigh’s evolution is to see non-traditional winter nations like Jamaica challenging for medals, and this mission is at the core of his current role.

“The Olympics are for the world, right?” Stokes continued. “There have been times that Jamaica could have put six people in the 100m track final of the (Summer) Olympics, but I don't think that's the idea of the Olympic Movement.

“Remember the Olympics is a movement, not an event. It's inclusive. It needs to create opportunities for people from all over the world and the moment you get to where you have to be from a nation that is north of a certain latitude in order to participate in winter sports, you're going to have a problem.

“We do need to find a way to make the sport more accessible financially, and at the same time improve gender equity and diversity in participation.”

The introduction of monobob has been heralded as a way of achieving these goals.

A simplified and less-expensive sled, coupled to the focus being on just one athlete, means that more nations can afford to be competitive.

In the COVID-affected 2020-21 Monobob World Series, Jamaica’s Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian and Carrie Brown both achieved multiple podiums, as well as Marina Silva Tuono of Brazil and Australia’s Breeana Walker.

Despite the fact that none of these women medalled in Beijing, the early signs have been encouraging.

“They are inspiring other people,” Stokes said. “They are challenging the notion that you have to be from a certain country to do this successfully. I think their success is absolutely critical.”

Doing things the Jamaican way

While Jamaica may not have the finances of other nations at the Winter Olympics, they certainly won’t be using that as an excuse.

Take for example Jamaica’s two-man team of Shanwayne Stephens and Nimroy Turgott, who could be seen pushing their Mini around their UK base in Peterborough and using a self-made weight rack in a garden after their usual facilities were closed due to the pandemic.

In this way, the Jamaican bobsleigh athletes of 2022 embodied the Olympic spirit.

“Not having millions of dollars doesn't define us,” Stokes said. “Our success to date and our plans for greater success in the next future simply recognises those things as our reality that must be navigated."

“That is why we will continue to go from strength to strength. Difficulty exists, but it doesn’t determine our future.

"When life gives you a bunch lemons, what are you going to do? How about a cool glass of lemonade?"

Finding the next Lascelles Brown

This determination to succeed, combined with the outstanding natural athletic ability that exists in Jamaica could easily see Stokes’ top-10 ambitions come to fruition.

But the talent won’t come from the places that most people think. The Beijing 2022 athletes from the island nation told us some familiar names for their bobsled fantasy dream team, but Stokes was quick to rule that out.

“Usain Bolt told us point blank that it’s too cold!” Stokes chuckled. “Asafa (Powell) still has an opportunity to get to the 100th sub 10-second 100m, so we will unlikely be seeing him in bobsleigh.”

_"_It's important to say that just because you can run a 100m fast doesn't mean you can push a bobsleigh fast. It is likely that we will continue to find some of the best pushers in the world from unlikely places.”

That point is personified by the story of Jamaican-born Lascelles Brown, who won two Olympic medals for Canada.

“Lascelles was one of the best pushers in the history of the sport, so we can create these athletes. You don't have to be a medallist already. In fact, that may present more challenges than solutions.

“If a small country like Jamaica produces Lascelles Brown and Wayne Thomas, the two best pushers in bobsleigh history, we're going to dig deeper and find more like them. It’s up to us to unearth and develop the talent, and we must not shy away from that.

"Bobsleigh is a legitimate alternative for the talent pool that exists in Jamaica."

Overcoming the cold

So how to tap into the sporting talent of a country, that favours athletics and cricket above all other sports?

"We're coming up with an innovative programme this year. What we've done in the past is, going to track meets, the army, and so on and so forth. We think we need to to go deeper.

"We're actually going to have a city-by-city, county-by-county, parish-by-parish push competition in Jamaica in April and May. We will bring the winners of those competitions into our bobsleigh programmes.

"Make no mistake about it, our priority is to develop talent back home in Jamaica, but we will also look to host championships and identify talent in other countries including the UK, US, Canada and Trinidad."

These local pushcart derby competitions, as featured at the start of the Cool Runnings film, are also a good way to introduce Jamaicans to bobsleigh before they have to consider the challenge of competing in the cold.

"That's right, there is no Jamaican that will shy away from a push challenge!"