โItโs OK for them to come up to me asking me about Cool Runnings and history and so forth,โ said Pitter, during training at Cortina.
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โItโs nice to interact with the fans, and Iโm going to give them every minute once I have time. Apart from doing the sport, Iโm always going to be there to talk to them.
โIโm 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.โ
If Jamaicaโs legacy crosses borders and sporting disciplines, it is a history that the current sledders must carry, as much as Candyโs men carried their sled to the finish post-crash.
โThis is real life,โ said Pitter. โThe movie is somewhat fiction, but this is real, real life. We are the real team.
โWeโve got a lot of young athletes on the team and coming on the team. Itโs still a development stage. Even though we are young athletes we are the best athletes Jamaica ever had in bobsleigh.โ
Jamaicaโs four-man bobsled team training in Cortina. Credit: AP
The leitmotif of Cool Runnings โ that sport/life is about striving and discovery, rather than mere pursuit of success โ isnโt the rationale of Team Jamaica. They arenโt intent on just being there.
Unfortunately for romantics, bobsled has taken a turn towards Hamiltonโs 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. Itโs a twist on Cool Runnings. In this 2026 incarnation, the villain isnโt 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
โObviously, as a smaller nation, we would love to have the standard sleds,โ said Kiara Reddingius, who is competing with Walker in the two-person sled in Cortina. โThe biggest nations have a big influence.โ
The Australian pairs, like the Jamaicans, donโt have the slickest sled and did well to finish 10th in the heats on Friday night, qualifying for final runs. This isnโt an issue in Walkerโs monobob, where sleds are cookie-cutter standardised.
This question of fairness, in a sport that celebrates Jamaicaโs 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 ambassadorโs gig to clamour aboard Team Jamaica.
Harris has cooked jerk chicken for Snoop whom he called one of โour biggest fans.โ
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 theyโre surely the coolest.
The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the Nine Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
