With temperatures rarely dropping below 20C and with no recorded snowfall in its entire history, it is safe to say that Jamaica is not a winter sport powerhouse.
But there is one sport in which the Caribbean island has a proud history – bobsleigh.
This is, of course, in part due to the iconic 1993 film Cool Runnings, which immortalised Jamaica’s bobsleigh debut at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
And despite the four-man team dramatically crashing during their penultimate heat 38 years ago in Canada, their heroics set the foundations for the country to become a regular fixture at Olympic bobsleigh competitions in the years that followed.
Their involvement in the Milan Cortina Games is their tenth appearance on the Olympic stage with entries this time around in the women’s monobob, men’s two-man and the men’s four-man.
Olympic trailblazers
Whilst Cool Runnings predominantly focuses on the exploits of the four-man team, the first Jamaicans to hit the bobsleigh track at the 1988 Olympics were the two-man duo of Dudley Stokes and Michael White.
Despite their best efforts, Stokes and White could only manage 30th place out of the 41 teams competing.
The pair were then joined by Devon Harris and Chris Stokes – brother of Dudley – for the four-man competition.
Their opening two runs could scarcely have gone any worse, with a broken push-bar inhibiting their first effort and an error from White costing them valuable time in the second.
The mishaps in the first and second runs were nothing compared to what was to come in the third run, however, with the bobsleigh crashing into the side of the track and only coming to a stop when it had flipped on its side and onto the top of the crew.
The team escaped from the accident unscathed but were forced to abandon their fourth and final run, culminating in a last place finish in the overall standings.
Whilst Jamaica might have finished way off the podium places in Calgary, the Cool Runnings film struck gold in Hollywood five years later, eventually becoming synonymous with their 1988 Olympic campaign.
The pioneering efforts of the bobsleigh squad, along with the resulting box office hit, is credited with encouraging other warm-weather nations such as Mexico, Puerto Rico and Brazil to establish their own teams.
The class of 2026
Jamaica will hit the track at the Cortina Sliding Centre looking to better the 14th-place finish the two-man bobsleigh team achieved at Lillehammer in 1994 – their best performance at the Olympics to date.
Former Team GB athlete Mica Moore is representing Jamaica in the woman’s monobob having previously represented Wales in the 4 x 100 metres relay at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and then Great Britain in the two-woman bobsleigh at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018.
The two-man and four-man teams, meanwhile, will be made up from a combination of Shane Pitter, Andrae Dacres, Junior Harris, Tyquendo Tracey and Joel Fearon.
The Team GB connection extends to the men’s bobsleigh with Fearon an Olympic bronze medalist in the sport from the Sochi 2014 Games.
Even though Jamaica are now firmly established on the Olympic scene, Fearon believes some of their rivals still look down their noses at their efforts.
‘We want people to show us a bit more respect,’ Fearon told The Guardian.
‘Some other teams, staff and officials have been treating us like we’re a bit stupid and don’t know what’s going on, not realising that I’m already an Olympic medallist. Almost as if we didn’t belong.
‘It was hurtful, and made the team angry. I had to be on my best behaviour to not get myself in any trouble, because on the GB team it’s something I would never experience.’
Despite a number of recent successes, including clinching their first-ever North American Cup in the four-man bobsleigh last November, the Jamaican contingent are at a disadvantage before the competition has even begun in Cortina.
The sleigh in which the four-man team will hurtle down the track in is a cast-off used by the South Koreans in Pyeongchang, whilst the two-man sleigh is former property of the USA.
The 1,700 metre Olympic track nestled at the foot of the Dolomites will also be something of a venture into the unknown for pilot Pitter, who, unlike many of his European counterparts, has not been afforded the luxury of having driven down it before in his career.
Sliding into the future
The Jamaica Bobsleigh Federation is three years into an ambitious project to win an Olympic medal by the 2034 Games.
Pivotal to this aim is the ‘Back to the Well’ programme which aims to exploit the extensive pool of athletic talent found on the island.
Only USA have won more sprinting medals in the history of the Summer Olympics than Jamaica, and it is hoped this enviable athletic ability can be transferred to the sport of bobsleigh – particularly where explosiveness in pushing the sleigh at the start of the run is so pivotal to the final time at the end of it.
Four-man competitor Tracey is a former 100m national champion, for example, whilst reigning 200m champion Ashanti Moore is a recent addition to the women’s programme.
Structural issues in Jamaican bobsleigh do remain, though, and will need to be ironed out if the country is serious about stepping on the Olympic podium in the years to come.
The island does not have any proper training facilities and the sport receives no financial support from the Jamaica Olympic Association, instead relying on the bulk of its income from sponsorship and fundraising.
Regardless of what happens in Italy over the next few days, it is clear that Jamaica are committed to sliding their way onto the Olympic podium sooner rather than later.