Olympics - Bobsleigh - Trinidad & Tobago's unlikely duo rush to get up to speed

YANQING, China : Trinidad & Tobago brakeman Andre Marcano had never set foot in a bobsled until last October. Now the sprinter, who has taken unpaid leave from his job as a physical education teacher, is rushing to get up to speed with team mate Axel Brown at the Winter Olympics.

"A normal team —- everybody else, the other 29 teams here - have been working together for years and years and years," said Brown.

"They have rapport, they know each other inside-out as persons, as athletes. We've really been against the clock on that."

Brown, 29, recruited Marcano via an Instagram message after switching to compete for the Caribbean nation following seven years representing Britain in the sport. He has dual nationality via his Trinidadian mother and British father.

"I've had more success and more enjoyment than in the seven years prior," Brown said after training at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre on Friday.

Pilot Brown needed a strong sprinter to pair with him as brakeman and came across track-and-field athlete Marcano, messaging him on Instagram.

Marcano, a PE teacher at an elementary school in New York, was initially sceptical. But, after a few months, he was persuaded to give the sport a try.

"I was pretty horrible on the first day," Marcano said in an interview posted on his Instagram on Friday.

"After the first day I feel, he's sending me home, he's wasting my time."

Marcano, 35, had long dreamt of competing in the summer Olympics, on the athletics track, and now finds himself racing instead down Yanqing's high-speed ice track.

But just getting to Beijing was a struggle for the elementary school teacher.

"I almost had to resign because it was too much time away from work. Luckily, things worked out that I didn't have to resign