Featuring a pilot from the genteel spa town of Harrogate and a brake-man who had never been in a bobsleigh until last Wednesday, Trinidad and Tobago are intent on giving the boys from ‘Cool Runnings’ a run for their money.
If Jamaica has largely owned the narrative of the tropical underdog since their unlikely first appearance in the sport in 1988, they now have a Caribbean rival intent on establishing a story of their own.
The latest Trinidadian bobsleigh quest is the brainchild of Axel Brown, who was born in North Yorkshire and initially tried out for the British team via their power-to-podium programme before a brief spell playing American Football in the United States.
The 29-year-old decided to rekindle his bobsleigh interest after watching the Sochi Olympics in 2014, returning to the country of his mother’s birth in a bid to re-establish a long-dormant bobsleigh programme that had seen Trinidad represented in three consecutive Games from 1994 to 2002.
Brown says he welcomes the inevitable ‘Cool Runnings’ comparisons having only got his Trinidadian passport in July and launched a frantic quest to launch his team and find a suitable brake-man from any number of accomplished sprinters on the island.
“I don’t see the ‘Cool Runnings’ comparison as a negative thing at all,” Brown told the PA news agency.
“Some think it implies amateurism but I think we owe a huge debt of gratitude because this kind of story might not exist without that movement. We’re living in the shadow of that legacy so I think we should embrace it.”
Brown had a regular brake-man until he discovered 35-year-old Andre Marcano, a New York-based mathematics graduate with a fine sprint pedigree and a long-held ambition to reach an Olympics – albeit the summer equivalent.
Marcano’s push-track times were so impressive that Brown immediately promoted him into his team, despite the cancellation of a pre-Games training camp putting Marcano in the possibly unique position of being the first athlete to carry his country’s flag at an opening ceremony without ever having competed in his sport.
The first time my brake-man ever got in a sled was here last Wednesday. Like everyone, his first run was pretty rough and wild, but he's OK now.
“The first time my brake-man ever got in a sled was here last Wednesday,” admitted Brown. “Like everyone, his first run was pretty rough and wild, but he’s OK now.
“He has proven himself an incredible athlete. When we pushed with Andre we were three tenths of a second faster, which is a monumental difference in bobsleigh, so we believed it was worth taking the risk.”
For Brown, the goal is establishing a Trinidadian sports story to match that of the Jamaicans – as well as claiming Caribbean bragging rights by encouraging a bit of friendly rivalry between the two nations.
“They’ve got ‘Cool Runnings’ and Usain Bolt so it’s time for us to create our own stories,” said Brown. “We’re always going to be compared to them so of course we have a friendly rivalry and we want to beat them.”
