As Jamaica seeks to become a force in bobsleigh, there has been a recruitment of track and field athletes to join the winter sport. This approach has yielded promising results, but, as pointed out by some of the country’s biggest stakeholders, excelling in athletics alone is not enough to succeed in bobsleigh.

Two-time national men’s 100m champion Tyquendo Tracey and reigning national 200m champion Ashanti Moore have become the latest high-profile sprinters to answer the call from the Jamaica Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation (JBSF). The pair will not only be looking to help the island qualify for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy next year, but win the country’s first-ever medal at the Games.

Though Moore is yet to grace the ice on a competitive level, Tracey surprised everyone in his debut at the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation World Championship in March in Lake Placid, New York.

The 32-year-old competed in the two-man bobsleigh event as brakeman with driver Shane Pitter. They finished 21st overall, one of Jamaica’s highest placings, but Tracey ranked sixth out of over 30 other brakemen at the championships.

National head coach Todd Hays, a former bobsleigh Olympic silver medallist with the USA, has previously guided top athletes from the USA and Canada to major success in the sport.

However, Hayes told the Jamaica Observer he was left in awe by Tracey’s debut performance.

“I’ve seen many high-level sprinters come try bobsleigh but they just don’t have the physical ability or can’t quite learn how to do it,” Hayes says. “Some think it’s fairly simple — you just run behind the sled. But it’s the angles in which you run, the body positioning, the strength to push it.

“When [Tracey] came up and did it in Lake Placid, for the first time-ever pushing a sled, it was the best I’ve ever seen. Then for him to finish sixth at the World Championships with just a couple weeks of training, you’ve got to believe that with a year or so, it’s going to be much faster.”

Tracey is used to success on another track but he says he can reach new heights in the coming months.

“There is quite a bit of things I can improve on,” Tracey says. “Shane Pitter is an excellent driver, but I know there are things he needs to improve on and there are things I need to improve on. There are textbooks and videos, and there are things we can watch and learn. Then we have one of the best coaches in the world so if he could get me to do what I did in a week, a couple of months with him is going to be something different.”

Tracey and Moore become part of the ranks of sprinters such as 2013 World Athletics Championship gold medallist Carrie Russell, and 2016 Olympic silver medallist Christania Williams, who have also ventured onto the ice.

JBSF president Chris Stokes, while elated with the acquisition of top track talents, doesn’t think that success in athletics necessarily translates to success in bobsleigh.

“Tyquendo has shown that if you have a certain stride pattern, drive phase, strength and explosiveness, you can both run fast and push the bobsleigh fast. We’ve seen that in Ashanti — she came up for 10 days of training in Lake Placid and was shattering records all over the place,” Stokes says.

“[But] not because you can run fast it necessarily means you’ll push a bobsleigh fast, but we’ve found persons who we know are excellent athletes and also demonstrated that they can push a bobsleigh really fast.”

Moore, 24, is still relatively young in athletics and is set to make her senior team debut at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September.

However, the former Hydel High star is planning to do a juggling act with both sports.

“I’m good at anything I put my mind to,” she says. “It was a chance just to see how everything goes or would go and then after that, I was like, ‘Okay, I know I can do this so I think it’s the time now.’

“I can balance both because track and field has its season and bobsleigh has its season, so let’s see how that goes.”

Tracey, the 2018 NACAC 100m champion, despite his early success in bobsleigh, has no intentions of quitting track though he missed out on a national team spot to the World Championships.

He, however, is planning to put more effort in his preparation for the ice.

“Winter sports are winter sports and summer sports are summer sports,” he says. “Training is somewhat similar – there are certain things you have to do that are key to bobsleigh but the training is 90 per cent similar and I’m just focusing on being the brakeman, which is the person that gives the power to get the sled off the ground.

“From that standpoint, I won’t necessarily have to put too much time into bobsleigh like Shane, the driver, because he has to be on the ice all the time, not me. I just need to develop power, force and speed, and apply myself properly to move the sled from A to B when we go out there. So it’s not too difficult – the only iffy part is there’s a lot of travelling — but outside of that, I can manage.”

With optimism surrounding Jamaica’s growing programme, Stokes is confident that the nation can make an avalanche in the winter sport due to the nation’s talent pool.

“Our programme is the ‘back to the well’ programme — the well is Jamaica, the depth of athletics heights is right here in Jamaica. Not everybody is going to make the summer Olympic team in track and field or in whatever other sport,” he says. “But we have outstanding athletes physically but most importantly, the mindset of the Jamaican athlete which is, ‘I know I’m in a completely strange sport in a strange part of the world, but I’m Jamaican and I can overcome and I belong’ and that’s the sort of mindset that you can’t teach. It’s in our blood — anywhere we go we must run the place. When our athletes show up on a bobsleigh track with the Germans, the Swiss, and the Italians — they don’t care. That’s part of what is going to take us to the podium.”

Jamaica will be seeking to finish on the podium in 2026 after missing out in their previous nine appearances and Hays is confident that drought will come to an end soon.

“We’ve got other guys who are tremendously gifted,” he says. “Shane Pitter is also an extremely gifted athlete, we’ve got Ashanti Moore — people like this are on a next level of talent and if we can get more athletes like this from Jamaica, we’re going to win a medal in this sport.”

TRACEY…we have one of the best coaches in the world so if he could get me to do what I did in a week, a couple of months with him is going to be something different (Photo: Naphtali Junior)