(CMR) A Jamaican women’s bobsled team qualified this weekend in St Moritz, Switzerland for next month’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea for the first time ever.
This comes some 30 years after a men’s team from the Caribbean nation first made their fairy tale appearance at the 1988 Calgary Games, it was reported on Monday.
Achieving a new goal for the women the three-member team comprises of Carrie Russell, Audra Segree and pilot Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian and they qualified. Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian, who drove for the U.S. at the 2014 Sochi Games, will pilot the Jamaican sled in the Pyeongchang Olympics next month. It'll likely be pushed by Carrie Russell, a sprinter who helped Jamaica win gold in the 4×100-meter relay at the 2013 world track and field championships.
This historic feat allow them to quality after capturing the 13th position just ahead of Romania. This placement allows for Jamaica to secure an automatic top-20 spot.
Jamaica was offered a quota allocation spot for women's bobsleigh, which we have gladly accepted,
Chris Stokes, president of the Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation.
In what is considered a miraculous improvement he admitted that they started the season sluggish with the first race in Germany earlier this year producing less than spectacular results. The team has one more event before moving into a training camp in Germany, from where they will head to Pyeongchang, South Korea, for the games.
They had a difficult time in Germany (first race this year). We did not get a good result. But we made adjustments and came back and had a very strong performance in San Moritz, which set us up.
But our first four races were not so good. Had we started the season like we finished it, we would have been in a stronger position. But the first six races, we did not get the results we thought we could and it caused some anxiety.
Germany and Canada were allocated three sled places. USA, Austria, Russia and Belgium got two sleds and Switzerland, Great Britain and Jamaica one each.
This is the 30th anniversary of the first team to qualify in 1988. A team of Jamaican bobsledders first gained fame in 1988 when they made their Olympic debut in Calgary, becoming a popular underdog story of the games. The team’s exploits provided the inspiration for the 1993 movie “Cool Runnings
Jamaica has now qualified for 11 Winter Olympic Games; six times with a two-man team, and four times with a four-man team. The first qualified in 1988 and followed that up with qualification in 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2014. Both the two-man and four-man teams qualified for the first four tournaments, but only the two man team qualified on the last three occasions.
Video of the Jamaican women making history by qualifying in the bobsled competition
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