OlymPicks: Cool Runnings Cooper, Ligety's Last Stand, and Paralympians Resume Training
OlymPicks, we highlight news, gossip, and developments regarding the buildup to Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympics.
Jamaican bobsleigh team practices pushing with a Mini Cooper
Jamaica's two-man bobsleigh team is back at it, and if their new training regiment doesn’t land them in 2022's top 15, we don’t know what will (apart from a major change of climate that turns Jamaica into a winter wonderland).
Jamaica first entered the Olympics' bobsleigh fray in 1988, a moment that was forever immortalized in the 1993 film Cool Runnings. Since then, the island nation has only managed to send a four-man bobsleigh team to the games a total of four times, with Dudley Stokes the only Jamaican bobsledder to compete in all four of those Olympics. However, since his retirement after the 1998 Games, no four-man team has managed to make the cut.
That certainly hasn't stopped the country's two-man teams, though, who have qualified to compete in six Olympic games, making for a number of interesting headlines along the way, not least of which involved the Dogecoin cryptocurrency community’s successful efforts to get the team to Sochi, where they placed 27th – their best year ever. Then, in 2018, the men’s team failed to qualify, but the women’s team made it in for the first time, managing to rank 19th at the PyeongChang games.
This year, the boys are really pushing for a spot in Beijing – literally. Pictures posted on the team’s Instagram show the duo pushing a Mini Cooper down a road in Peterborough, Jamaica. According to Reuters, who first reported the story, local residents initially tried to aid the pair in their efforts, thinking they were a couple of stranded drivers who just happened to be wearing winter tracksuits.
"We had to come up with our own ways of replicating the sort of pushing we need to do. So that’s why we thought: why not go out and push the car?" said team member Shanwayne Stephens. Now, Stephens and his partner Nimroy Turgott are spending their days pushing the vehicle from various positions and performing the exercises with and without their helmets, despite the scorching weather.
American alpine legend Ted Ligety's last stand in Beijing
Ted Ligety recently told NBC Sports that he will wrap up a 16-year Olympic career after he competes in Beijing 2022. Ligety has had a string of strong performances since joining the Olympic stage at the age of 21. He took the gold in the combined event at Turino 2006, and another gold in the Giant Slalom event at Sochi 2014. However, by the time the Beijing games roll around, he will be 37 years old, making him the oldest Olympian ever to compete for the alpine skiing medal.
Meanwhile, on the US women’s alpine team, Alice McKennis was recently celebrated by the Aspen Times due to her inspiring comeback story. A leg-break injury following her fifth-place run at PyeongChang 2018 had temporarily put her out of commission, but she has been slowly getting back on her game since her recovery. Now entering her 30s, McKennis says that she not only plans to ski in 2022 but also continue her career beyond Beijing.
Chinese Paralympic training facilities reopen
Paralympic athletes in China have cause to celebrate as their training bases have finally reopened after more than four months of closure.
Competitors in the events of track and field, swimming, table tennis, badminton, weightlifting, wheelchair fencing, shooting, archery, cycling, judo, blind football, and sitting volleyball have already resumed training in preparation for Tokyo 2021, and Beijing 2022 hopefuls in the events of para ice hockey, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, alpine skiing, and snowboarding have also returned to the ice and snow.
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Images: Jamaica Bobsled (via Instagram), the Denver Post
