(CNN)It has been 34 years since Jamaica made its Winter Olympics debut in bobsleigh at the Calgary 1988 Games, an unlikely performance that was later immortalized in the Disney feature film Cool Runnings.
Although the team of four fell and received a “Did Not Finish” score, the exploits of Dudley ‘Tal’ Stokes, Michael White, Devon Harris and Chris Stokes were immortalized in the 1993 hit, which remains one of the highest-grossing sports comedies .
Now, perhaps more importantly, the team has inadvertently inspired generations of Jamaican winter sports stars.
“People look at ‘Cool Runnings’ and they’re very influenced in a lot of ways,” Tal Stokes told CNN Sport.
Decades later, the island nation qualified for the first time in Olympic history for three bobsleigh events – two-man, women’s monobob and four-man bobsleigh – and fielded its first-ever alpine skier.
Jamaica’s two-man bobsled team of Shanwayne Stephens and Nimroy Turgott finished last at the event, but the nation will get a second bite in the cherry this week in four-man bobsleigh.
Unlikely beginnings
Stokes told CNN that the 1988 team “started from scratch.”
The film Cool Runnings was made five years after Jamaica competed in the Calgary Games – but according to Stokes, the film was conceived by Americans William Maloney and George Fitch before he and his teammates even started competing together.
“I am told that the two gentlemen came up with the idea. William [Maloney] wanted to march at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. He has his bucket list and has been checking things off his whole life. And George Fitch always had in mind to do a movie,” he said.
The men were both living in Jamaica at the time: Fitch worked for the US government and businessman Maloney was married to a Jamaican.
“The two were drinking in a bar in Kingston and watching the pushcart derby on TV and rode the bobsleigh together.”
The pair couldn’t get any athletes to take up bobsledding for their endeavor, so they went to the Army to find potential candidates, according to Stokes.
“Back then I was a sports fan, played football in the army and was an officer,” he said.
Stokes said he was on holiday at the time and received a call from his unit telling him to try his hand at box truck trials to test his ability for the sport.
The orders “came to me as an order down the chain of command, and I really had no choice. And so I left,” he said.
“A Brutal Existence”
Getting into bobsleigh wasn’t easy: “I didn’t know anything about the sport I was getting into,” Stokes said.
Bobsledding training was, according to Stokes, a “brutal life, from open eyes to closed eyes”, with the team having to work hard to reach a competitive standard with no prior experience in the sport.
“[The team] got into the cold weather. Strict, strict schedules on days that were structured on time from start to finish and just pounded,” Stokes said.
“We had to change the culture or look at the culture that has been successful in sport and that is the typical German culture,” added Stokes. “We had to switch to German mode to get things done.”
A complicated legacy
Cool Runnings became very popular and grossed over $154 million at the box office. But the film’s commercial success had a profound impact on Stokes’ life, and the light-hearted storyline featuring hapless athletes didn’t fully reflect how much the real team had achieved.
“‘Cool Runnings’ has cast a massive shadow over my life,” Stokes told CNN.
“It’s a very uncomfortable position to actually be alive to see your legacy unfold,” he said. “Most people die before their legacy is revealed, but I had to live with it.
“It started with comedy,” he explained. “A lot of what we did initially was comedic. But over the years we became real competitors and worked at the highest level. And that was a journey in itself.”
His athletic career spanned four Olympic Games, during which he significantly reduced his running speed.
“My Olympic career lasted 10 years… I attended four games from 1988 to 1998: Calgary, Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano in Japan. So it’s very, very unusual that that doesn’t happen.”
Inspire the next generation
Jamaica has yet to win an Olympic bobsleigh medal, but this year’s four-man team, nicknamed “Fire on Ice,” aims to change that — 24 years after the national four-man bobsleigh team last qualified for the Winter Olympics.
That year, Benjamin Alexander made history as Jamaica’s first alpine skier after Cool Running’s jibes on the slopes made him seriously consider taking up the sport.
“When I got good enough to ski socially with them, being the only black representative in the group even though I’m only half black, and being of Jamaican descent, people kept throwing jokes at me, side jokes about ‘cool Runnings’, ‘the Jamaican bobsled team and ‘you should go to the Olympics,'” Alexander told CNN Sport.
Alexander went to the PyeongChang Games as a spectator in 2018 and began to wonder if he could compete at that level.
“One of the things that struck me, apart from really enjoying the spirit of the Olympics, was that there were only three Jamaican athletes in attendance.
“It surprised me to know how strong Jamaica is at the Summer Games, to know how popular this movie ‘Cool Runnings’ is.
“I kind of had this idea in the back of my mind: Let’s see if that’s possible. I figured the most likely outcome would be death, or at least serious injury.”
In the years since his Olympic debut, Stokes has become more comfortable with his position in sports and pop culture history.
“I realized that participating in the Olympic Games is a goal worth striving for. Participation that is not aimed at winning a gold medal has its merits,” he said.
“Most people, most athletes at the Olympics… one: not getting a medal and two: not making it to the finals. This is a reality.
“Life is a struggle, anything worth doing in life is a struggle. And every time you engage in a fight, you will suffer. And the only thing I want to tell people is that people think that suffering is something to avoid: no, that’s the reality.
“What we need to develop is: How will we survive the struggle and suffering and ultimately triumph?”
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