A Sunshine Coast secret weapon has helped power the Jamaican Bobsleigh team into the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics – more than 30 years after the nation’s original Games qualifiers were immortalised in film.
For over two decades, physiotherapist and high-performance coach Jo Brown has championed athletes from 16 different sports.
These included global tennis superstars, the Australian beach volleyball team, the Australian Swim Team and Jamaican Track and Field squad.
Now, Dr Brown has just returned to the Coast from the pre-qualifying rounds where she was instrumental in helping three sleds from the Caribbean nation become part of Jamaica’s biggest Winter Olympics team.
The country will be competing in the four-man bobsled event, as well as the two-man and women’s monobob, which is making its Olympic debut.
Dr Brown was delighted when the news came through this week and she will travel to Beijing as its official physiotherapist.
She said she could not be prouder of the team’s efforts.
“They have worked so incredibly hard on both their physical and mental condition and they are more than ready,” she said.
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“To have three sleds qualified means we will have both the men and women’s teams competing in Beijing and I will be right there helping them go for gold.”
It is the first time Jamaica has qualified for the four-man bobsled event at the Games since the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
The team secured the 28-sled field’s final spot on merit in this season’s international results.
Jamaica – the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean, lying 145km south of Cuba – is a laid-back, tropical wonderland that has a snowflake in hell of ever witnessing a truly cold Northern Hemisphere winter. The average temperature throughout the year is 27C.
That makes the efforts of the first four-man Jamaican bobsled team compete in a Winter Olympics even more remarkable.
A crash on the ice put its crowd favourite team out of contention at the Calgary Games in Canada in 1988.
But its improbable effort to make the starting line of the Olympics in the first place inspired the 1993 Disney comedy, Cool Runnings, starring the late John Candy.
The Jamaica Bobsleigh Team is no longer a running joke, and the enthusiastic fans are buoyed by the professionalism of world-class support staff including Dr Brown, who has worked with the current team for the past two years.
But this is not her first Olympics achievement.
In 2021, she worked with the Australian Beach Volleyball Team – helping members qualify for the Tokyo Olympics after an absence of 13 years.
Having worked with the world’s fastest athletes on the land (Jamaican track and field) and in the water (Australian swim team) for the last two decades, Dr Brown lives and breathes high performance.
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“For these athletes, they have to believe it, in order to experience it and I help them on that journey, by ensuring the mindset of athletes is as finely tuned as their bodies,” she said.
While Dr Brown has worked with athletes at international level across five different countries, the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team remains very special to her.
“This team has enormous heart,” she said.
“There has been sacrifice and struggle but together, as a team, we triumphed.
“It is an honour to be a part of their journey.”
Beijing 2022 The Olympic Winter Games will begin on February 4 and run until February 20. Information: olympics.com/en/beijing-2022/
