The four-man Jamaican bobsled team, which quickly became the team the world was rooting for in its Winter Olympics debut in 1988, was back Saturday at the Beijing Winter Olympics. It’s the nation’s first appearance in the four-man in 24 years.
While the energy is high for the team of driver Shanwayne Stephens, Ashley Watson, Rolando Reid and Matthew Wekpe, expectations remain low. The foursome was in last place out of 28 sleds after the first two runs. With a combined time of 2:02.19, they are more than five seconds behind the leaders from Germany.
The final two runs are Sunday, which will be Saturday night in the U.S.
Jamaica returned to the two-man Olympic event after missing the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. Stephens and Nimroy Turgott were last in the 30-sled field after three runs and did not participate in the final run. The Jamaicans’ best Olympic finish in two-man was a 27th-place showing by Winston Watts and Marvin Dixon at the Sochi Games eight years ago.
Former U.S. bobsledder Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian represented Jamaica this year in the debut of women’s monobob. She finished 19th out of 20 sleds.
Fenlator-Victorian tried to get into the two-woman event, but was denied by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She asked CAS to throw out some of the calculations used by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation to determine which nations qualified for the event and give Jamaica a spot that allocated to France.
Fenlator-Victorian raced for the U.S. at the 2014 Olympics and competed for Jamaica at the 2018 games.
The story of the original Jamaican bobsled team inspired the 1993 movie “Cool Runnings.”