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Local News: Jamaica made bobsleigh famous
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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