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Local News: Jamaica made bobsleigh famous Black Habits Articles Many winter Olympics sports suffer from lack of exposure except in the few countries with a rich tradition in them. Bobsleigh was a prime example. That all changed, however, thanks to the astonishing publicity generated for the sport from a warm, tropical Caribbean island. Who’d have thought that was possible?

In 1988 at Calgary, Jamaica shocked the Winter Olympics world by entering a bobsled team in the four-man event. The team quickly became a sensation (some would say a distraction) and the fans in Calgary fell in love with the “fish-out-ofwater” syndrome.

Yet that was not the end of the publicity. In 1993, the story of the Jamaican team from the Calgary Olympics was made into a Hollywood movie titled Cool Runnings, starring the late, great Canadian funny man, John Candy.

The Jamaican team used track and field sprinters, feeling that the starting push part of the event would be where they could generate an advantage over the “winter” countries.

While it didn’t work in Calgary (several crashes), by 1992 the team placed 14th, finishing ahead of Winter Olympic powerhouse nations like Russia, Italy, France and the USA. The film inspired Brazilian Eric Maleson (who had never seen snow) to create the Brazilian Ice Sports Federation and a bobsled team in 1995.

For Turin, Brazil will keep the tropical countries represented, as Jamaica failed to qualify this time around.

Bobsleigh was invented in Switzerland in the 1800s. Initially, the races were conducted on roads packed down with snow. At the turn of the century, the transition was made into man-made courses.

Technological advancements led to today’s tracks that are nearly a mile long and have at least 15 curves. Sleds can now reach astonishing speeds of up to 135 kilometres per hour (85 mph) and athletes are pulled at forces reaching five Gs!

The sport was included in the original Olympic program in 1924 at Chamonix, France as a fourman event. The two-man event was added at the 1932 Olympics at Lake Placid. A two-woman event was added in 2002 at Salt Lake City.

Canadians didn’t really take up bobsleigh until the late 1950s, but soon stunned the world when Vic Emery led his fourman team to the gold medal in 1964 at Innsbruck, Austria. The victory was an astonishing accomplishment made even more so when you consider the fact Emery and his crew had to train indoors in a gym and only got four practice runs in prior to the event!

Canada slid from the podium for 34 years until Pierre Lueders teamed with Dave MacEachern to take gold at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. - George Gross, Sun Media
Posted on Wednesday, February 15 @ 00:00:00 UTC by jcohen



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