Cortina

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Axel Brown, the pilot of Trinidad and Tobago’s bobsled team, came to the Milan-Cortina Winter Games with a simple goal.

“Just don’t come last,” he said. “We know that there is a 0% chance of us contending for medals. It doesn’t matter if we have the absolute best day we’ve ever had.

“That’s just the reality of it. It’s not defeatist, it’s not negative. It’s just being realistic.”

But it’s also realistic to believe that Trinidad, just by being in the competition, is furthering something of a revolution in the Winter Olympics in general, and in bobsledding in particular.

When Jamaica debuted in the event in 1988, it was so novel it inspired the 1993 Disney movie “Cool Runnings.” Now, it’s no longer unusual to see a team from a tropical climate competing in the Winter Games; there are 11 Caribbean and South American countries, plus Puerto Rico, competing in the Milan-Cortina Olympics.

When the bobsled competition in Cortina begins Sunday, Trinidad will have teams in the two- and four-man events for the first time, while Jamaica will compete in both those events as well as the monobob. Brazil will also be there.

And Brown says it’s only a matter of time — and money — before others join and start contending for medals.

“There’s a very deep talent pool in Caribbean bobsled, one that could make a world-class bobsled program without a doubt,” he said.

That’s because bobsled races are often won or lost at the start, where speed, explosive power and acceleration are vital in getting the 400-pound sled moving. Sprinters have all those traits.

“Even more specific, it’s usually big sprinters,” said Curtis Tomasevicz, a former football player at Nebraska who won Olympic gold and silver medals in the bobsled before becoming a coach with the U.S. team. “They’ve got just an athleticism that is very applicable to pushing sleds.”

Jamaica takes part in a training run at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games on Friday.

(Al Bello / Getty Images)

And the best sprinters in the world come from the Caribbean — so many, in fact, that trying to make a national team for the Summer Olympics can seem like trying to win the lottery. The Winter Games offer another path.

“In Trinidad and Tobago, there’s a wealth of sprinting talent. So an athlete that in another nation may be the best in the country doesn’t necessarily get a look in Trinidad,” Brown said. “What we’ve been able to do is kind of give those athletes that were maybe on the fringe an option at achieving all of their sporting goals, just doing it in a different way.

“They’ve been training for bobsled their entire lives. They just didn’t know it.”

The transition can be difficult just the same. The first time Trinidad’s Micah Moore, a former sprinter, rode a sled, he said he thought he was going to die.

“I was scared out of my mind,” he said. “I was legitimately feeling, ‘I just want this to be over.’

“After that feeling came off, I was like, ‘Let’s go again.’ It’s an adrenaline rush. There’s no amount of words I could put to say how it felt in that moment.”

If Caribbean bobsledders are deep in talent, what they lack are world-class facilities and funding. In the former they’re hardly alone, said Tomasevicz.

“There are a lot of other nations that obviously don’t have a home track to practice on,” he said. “Even Great Britain, they don’t have a track in their country. So they have to spend time in other nations actually training for the sport.”

Trying to find the money is an even bigger problem — especially for Trinidad, which Brown said was the only team in Cortina that didn’t receive government funding.

“Bobsled is an expensive sport,” Trinidad’s Xaverri Williams said. “We’ve been trying to negotiate with our [national Olympic committee], our Ministry of Sport, reaching out to individuals who are willing to help us.”

Trinidad doesn’t even have a decent sled; it will be racing Sunday with an old secondhand one the team owes money on. Getting a new one that would be competitive with the best in the world could easily cost $250,000 or more.

“You need the funds to further develop the broader program, the recruitment, the [research and development] of the equipment. Everything that there is involved in bobsled,” said Brown, was born in England to a Trinidadian mother, which allows him to compete for the island in the Olympics. “And you need to be able to sustain that.”

You also need the belief that it’s possible to succeed in an icy winter sport even though you’re from a sun-washed country where the average annual temperature is 80 degrees. Jamaica provided that.

“We do in fact look up to them,” Williams said. “When those guys initially slided, it was an eye-opener for the rest of the world, that a Caribbean nation could actually compete. They inspired us.”

“I’m very proud of that,” said Chris Stokes, a four-time Olympian and member of the “Cool Runnings” team who is now president of the country’s bobsled federation.

The next step is to outgrow the novelty and become medal contenders, something Stokes says Jamaica can do by the 2034 Games in Salt Lake City. A top-12 finish in Cortina would keep them on pace to do that, he said.

As for Trinidad and Tobago, Brown said they faced so many challenges just getting to Italy that they considered it a victory when they checked into the Olympic village.

“Our gold medal,” he said “was qualifying.”

Ukrainian skeleton racer Heraskevych says 2006 Winter Olympics ‘acts as propoganda for Russia’ after IOC decision.

The Court ⁠of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) began hearing Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych’s appeal on Friday, with a decision expected later in the day on whether he can return to competition at ⁠the Milano Cortina Olympics after his disqualification over his “helmet of remembrance”.

The 27-year-old was removed from the Olympic programme on Thursday when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation jury ruled that imagery on the helmet — depicting ⁠athletes killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 — breached rules on political neutrality at the Games.

Heraskevych is seeking reinstatement or at least a CAS-supervised run, pending a decision by sport’s highest court in advance of the final two runs set for Friday evening.

“I’m pretty positive about how it went,” he told reporters outside the office of CAS ‌in Milan following his appearance before the court. “I hope the truth will prevail, and I know that I was innocent.”

The racer said he was now getting threats from Russians and blamed the IOC’s decision for that.

“I believe that these Games now and this act of the IOC also serves as an instrument of propaganda for Russia,” Heraskevych said. “I still receive a lot of threats from the Russian side.”

The IOC, whose president, Kirsty Coventry, met Heraskevych on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to break the impasse, has ⁠allowed the athlete to keep his credentials despite his disqualification, so he can ⁠stay at the Milano Cortina Games.

“For me, sitting down with Vladyslav and his dad, the conversation was extremely respectful,” Coventry told a news conference on Friday. “After that, I asked the disciplinary commission to re-look at not pulling his accreditation, out of respect for him ⁠and his dad. I thought that was the right thing to do.”

The case has dominated headlines in the first week of the Olympics.

CAS Secretary-General Matthieu Reeb ⁠could not say exactly when they were likely to reach a ⁠decision, despite the tight schedule.

“We hope to have a final decision announced today, but it’s difficult for me to say when,” Reeb told reporters. “Obviously, we know the schedule of the competition, and it is an objective for CAS to be able to run the decision ‌before the start of the race, but we don’t know how long the hearing will take.

“We have only one arbitrator from Germany, and she will be in charge of this case. We have participants attending in ‌person, ‌like the IOC, the athlete is here, the father of the athlete is here.

“We have a representative of IBSF attending remotely. The athlete is also assisted by legal counsel speaking from Kyiv.”

Jordan Stolz will be trying to win multiple gold medals in speedskating the Milan Cortina Olympic Games.

(Morry Gash / Associated Press)

Since making his Olympic debut at 17, Stolz has become a star in international speedskating. He was the first man to win three world championships in one year in 2023 and repeated in the 500, 1,000 and 1,500 meters in 2024. He also competes in the team pursuit. U.S. speedskating has several medal contenders, including two-time Olympic bronze medalist Brittany Bowe and gold medalist Erin Jackson, who became the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal at the Winter Olympics in 2022.