I miss waking up in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, to the sound of waves lapping on the shore. I miss drinking iced tea on my balcony in St Andrew, Jamaica, as I watch the lights come up over Kingston City. I miss haggling with vendors at the farmers market in Medellín, Colombia. Most of all, I miss my wife. What I do not miss is cold, and most definitely I do not miss the snow. Yet, this morning, the first day of the monobob event, that is exactly what we woke up to — snow, and lots of it.

It may seem strange that I am going on about snow, given that we are at the Winter Olympics, but one of the many topics that we don’t spend near enough time thinking about is the impact of climate change on the sustainability of the Olympic Winter Games. I remember at the Calgary Olympic Winter Games in 1988 riding in the back of a truck from the finish back to the start. On the way I saw a huge fan-like machine blowing snow on to a slope. It turns out that the Chinook winds were on a familiar flow from the Canadian Rockies onto the prairies and right through Calgary. These winds are warm, dry, and at times, powerful. I recount an experience at those Games with the Chinook winds in my book Cool Runnings and Beyond: The Story of the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team: “A windstorm sprayed the track with dust, slowing it down significantly. Our team had already made their descent when this occurred and ended up in 16th position, ahead of many leading teams, including the eventual silver medalist Wolfgang Hoppe of the DDR [East Germany]. The run was cancelled by the authorities to restore their perceived proper order of things.”

What I witnessed on my drive up the hill in Calgary was the effect of the warm Chinook Winds that had melted the snow on the ski slopes, and snow-making machines were brought out to make snow; a concept that took me a moment to digest. This was highly unusual, innovative, mostly theoretical, and not foreseen as generally required. Fast-forward to Beijing where over 100 snow generators and 300 of the new and improved fan-looking things are being deployed to make 100 per cent of the snow needed for the Games. Snow-making is not a contingency plan here, it is the plan. Although it is accepted that both Beijing and Zhangjiakou, which together have all Games venues, are in arid areas, climate change itself seems to be impacting the number of locations where the Winter Olympics may be reasonably hosted. A report by the Sport Ecology Group entitled Slippery Slopes: How Climate Change is Threatening the Winter Olympics makes for concerning, if not depressing, reading. Here, again, I call for decisive, purposeful action by the International Olympic Committee and international federations to highlight the interconnectedness of the threat of climate change and seek meaningful action to mitigate same. Having snow on slopes in China disappear may be an inconvenience, but having beaches in Jamaica wiped out is a catastrophe. We all are at risk here.

So there was snow. And the “Sleeping Dragon” awoke. The first bobsleigh race on the Sleeping Dragon was the women’s monobob. Several things stood out in the race. The first was the complete dominance in such a competitive event by Kaille Humphries of the US. Humphries won the two-woman gold in 2010 and 2014, and bronze in 2018. She is widely regarded as having the best hands in women’s bobsleigh and the majesty in her driving lines confirmed that. The second interesting outcome from the first two heats of the four-heat event is the fifth-place position of Chinese athlete Mingming Huai. This demonstrates the importance of getting time on the track. She would have had hundreds of runs on the track compared to, at most, dozens by her more accomplished opponents. And, finally, it is worth noting the 17th place position of Mariama Jamanka the current two-woman Olympic champion. Driving a bobsleigh is not an easy proposition. Our Jazmine Fenlator finished day one two positions behind Jamanka in 19th position.

This is Fenlator-Victorian third Games and her swansong. The last few years have been exceedingly challenging for her and as I saw this warrior queen approach the starting line I recalled the words of Kipling: “If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will, which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ I saw her holding on.

The sled was not as obedient to her commands as in earlier years, but she was holding on. And, at the end of the run, as she emerged tall and graceful from the sled, Maya Angelou’s words oozed from her attitude: “you may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but, still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Rise “Queen Jazmine”. We salute you. Your teammates salute you. Our fans and your teammates have collectively decided to name the four-man sled after your beloved sister, gone too soon. The name of the sled will be “Rude Gyal” Angelica after her social media handle. We all rise to honour her and you.