For the first time in the country’s history, Jamaica will have three teams, including a female team, in bobsleigh competition at the Winter Olympics that are scheduled to get underway in Beijing, China on February 4.
Olivia Grange said It demonstrates that nothing is impossible during a media briefing to announce the teams on Tuesday. We don’t have no snow yet here we are competing against the world’s best on ice. The minister also that these were the first Winter Games in which Jamaica will be represented in three bobsleigh events. In addition to the new event, the women’s monobob, Jamaica has also qualified for the two-man event. for the first time in 24 years we’re back in the four-man competition.
Jamaica’s qualification for the Games that were held in Nagano, Japan, that year. That was 10 years after Jamaica stunned the world by qualifying for the Winter Games in Calgary, Alberta in Canada, a moment that sparked the cult classic ‘Cool Runnings’ and which made the world take notice that Jamaica is much more than the summer Olympics.
Jamaica could compete in a fourth bobsleigh event as the two-woman team missed out on a tiebreaker but could still compete as the first alternate if one of the qualifying nations withdraws.
Grange noted the historic qualification of skier, the UK-based Benjamin Alexander who will give Jamaica a first in Alpine skiing. The 38-year-old Alexander qualified to represent Jamaica because his father is Jamaican. He has become the second person to represent Jamaica in skiing at the Games, following Errol Kerr who finished ninth in the Ski Cross at the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
“As you go to Beijing, please know that the entire country is cheering you on; and you can continue to count on the support of the Ministry and the Government of Jamaica,” Grange told the athletes
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