“It’s OK for them to come up to me asking me about Cool Runnings and history and so forth,” said Pitter, during training at Cortina.
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“It’s nice to interact with the fans, and I’m going to give them every minute once I have time. Apart from doing the sport, I’m always going to be there to talk to them.
“I’m happy they come up to me and even though the Cool Runnings movie was years ago, we are still it. We are better at it, and we try to actually make it on the podium.”
If Jamaica’s legacy crosses borders and sporting disciplines, it is a history that the current sledders must carry, as much as Candy’s men carried their sled to the finish post-crash.
“This is real life,” said Pitter. “The movie is somewhat fiction, but this is real, real life. We are the real team.
“We’ve got a lot of young athletes on the team and coming on the team. It’s still a development stage. Even though we are young athletes we are the best athletes Jamaica ever had in bobsleigh.”
Jamaica’s four-man bobsled team training in Cortina. Credit: AP
The leitmotif of Cool Runnings – that sport/life is about striving and discovery, rather than mere pursuit of success – isn’t the rationale of Team Jamaica. They aren’t intent on just being there.
Unfortunately for romantics, bobsled has taken a turn towards Hamilton’s sport, in that technological supremacy plays an inordinate part in the outcomes of races.
The German teams won gold, silver and bronze in the two-man and the expectation is that they will occupy most, if not all, the podium, by tomorrow. It’s a twist on Cool Runnings. In this 2026 incarnation, the villain isn’t a country, per se, but a system that means one team, or teams, from countries with superior, aerodynamically built sleds costing millions, will slide faster.
Germany dominate the podium in the two-man bobsled.Credit: AP
“Obviously, as a smaller nation, we would love to have the standard sleds,” said Kiara Reddingius, who is competing with Walker in the two-person sled in Cortina. “The biggest nations have a big influence.”
The Australian pairs, like the Jamaicans, don’t have the slickest sled and did well to finish 10th in the heats on Friday night, qualifying for final runs. This isn’t an issue in Walker’s monobob, where sleds are cookie-cutter standardised.
This question of fairness, in a sport that celebrates Jamaica’s magical existence, was posed to IOC president Kirsty Coventry on the day before the Cool Runners began their four-man heats. Her lengthy response was that the IOC was cognisant of advancing technology and that technology itself could play a role in achieving a level playing field.
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Serious about their craft, the Cool Runners have a heaving bandwagon. Rapper Snoop Dog, an arbiter of cool, has detoured from his lucrative American ambassador’s gig to clamour aboard Team Jamaica.
Harris has cooked jerk chicken for Snoop whom he called one of “our biggest fans.”
Snoop Dog, Hamilton and so many others are riding this sleigh, despite the impossibility of medals. This four-man team might not be the best, but they’re surely the coolest.
The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the Nine Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
