Original 'Cool Runnings' racer has big plans for Jamaican bobsleigh

by Ryland James

Yanqing, China - One of the pioneering Jamaican bobsleigh team which first competed at the 1988 Winter Games and inspired the movie "Cool Runnings" has big plans for  racers from the Caribbean island at future Olympics.

Thirty-four years ago, Chris Stokes only planned to travel to the Calgary Winter Olympics to watch his brother Dudley pilot the four-man team and carry the national flag at the opening ceremony.

However, when one of the original team got injured, Stokes stepped in at the last minute and the Jamaican team went on to become the darlings of the 1988 Games.

Stokes is now 58 and has been president of the Jamaican Bobsleigh Federation since 1995 -- and no-one has done more to promote the sport in the unlikely setting of the Caribbean island.

Under his guidance, Jamaica has qualified for three bobsleigh events at the Beijing Games this month, including the two-man, women's monobob and has sent a four-man bob for the first time since Nagano 1998, which was Stokes' last Olympics.

Yet he stumbled into the sport almost by accident.

"My brother invited me to Calgary to watch, but what I didn't know was that there was a plot to get me to try the sport, because of an injury," Stokes told AFP at the venue for the Beijing bobsleigh events.

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"I had a background in sprinting and sat in a bobsleigh for the first time on the Monday.

"I found it exhilarating and by the following weekend, I was in my first Olympic race. "It wasn't even a week!"

- 'It defined my life' -

The Jamaican bob dropped out of the competition in Calgary after crashing on the third of four runs.

Yet the heart-warming story of the Jamaicans defying