Sochi notebook: Jamaica is still jammin’ at the Winter Olympics

It took Jamaica 12 years to return to Olympic bobsled competition, and despite placing no higher than 25th in four official training runs (out of 30 sleds), 46-year-old driver Winston Watts said on Friday, “we are as serious as athletes as the Swiss, Germans and Canadians.

“We are not a bunch of jokers. Competing in bobsleigh means the world to me. The fact that we are here means a lot to Jamaica — even if in my country we have ice only in refrigerators.”

Continuing on the kitchen theme, Watts said, “Being out of bobsleigh I felt I was starving or something, and now we are back. We are hungry men, and hungry men are angry.”

The four-time Olympian had a rocky start to the Sochi games. Last week, his luggage and that of his brakeman, Marvin Dixon — and their sled’s runners — were lost in transit en route to Sochi, and when everything arrived, Watts found protein powder all over his clothes. Security had apparently opened his containers and failed to seal them. Watts’ helmet was still coated during the practice runs on Feb. 6.

“I had protein powder going into my eyes,” he said that day.

Also, while he was away from the sport, his father (who used to work in the sugarcane fields) died. His mother lives with Watts in the United States, and he tries to provide financial support for his five siblings when he can. Just to get to Russia, the Jamaicans also had to raise about $80,000, and now Watts’ 2002 two-man brakeman, Lascelles Brown, competes for Canada. Brown has already earned a silver (in 2006, two-man) and bronze (in 2010, four-man) for his adopted country. 

Nonetheless, Watts said, “Jamaicans are the most loving, caring guys. We sometimes flirt a lot. We appreciate everyone in this world. It doesn’t matter who you are, we are still going to love you.”

Watts and Dixon will be competing on Sunday and Monday. 

As the Sochi games neared the midpoint, several athletes began training and some were still arriving. And although Friday was Valentine’s Day, the snow and ice showed no love for some.

A day after an ice maker at the Sanki Sliding Center was struck by a bobsled and suffered two compound leg fractures, U.S. driver Elana Meyers took her first training run and flipped her BMW bobsled on the penultimate turn of the 1.13-mile course. The USA-1 pilot was late entering curve 16, and the sled shot toward the upper wall. When it made contact, she said, “the sled shot straight down and (the) pressure at the end of the curve tossed me over.”

Meyers came through it all right, as did the pricey chassis.

“It’s amazingly OK,” she said of the BMW sled. “We were still fast on the second run, so obviously it’s good to go.”

Meyers, a 2010 Olympic bobsled bronze medalist, and her brakewoman, Lauryn Williams (a gold and silver Olympic medalist in track and field), had the third-fastest time in that second training run to lead a 3-4-5 U.S. effort.

A few miles down the road, two stretchers saw action at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. The 2009 world champion in women’s snowboard cross, Helen Olafsen of Norway, landed a jump sideways and off balance on the top part of the course and cut her forehead.

As a precaution, she went to the local hospital for X-rays, but Norway’s American coach, Ross Hindman, said Olafsen remained conscious and spoke of “a little bit of a pain in her neck — but she could have been (referring to) me.”

The second stretcher went to Byron Wells of New Zealand during men’s ski halfpipe training when he crashed on the lower section of the course. He remained conscious while the extent of his injuries was being investigated. Wells’ older and younger brothers, Josiah and Beau-James, will also compete in halfpipe here on Tuesday, and their father, Bruce, coaches the New Zealand freestyle team. Byron placed fifth at the 2011 World Championships.

Finally, three time zones away, Alpine skier Felix Neureuther of Germany was in a single-car accident on the way to the Munich airport to catch his morning flight to Sochi. He reportedly hit a barrier on an icy road, but no ambulance was called. The German Olympic Committee said the 2013 World Championship silver medalist in slalom is still expected to vie for medals at his third Olympics, in both giant slalom Wednesday and slalom Feb. 22. Of note: Neureuther’s mother, Rosi Mittermaier, won double gold at the 1976 Innsbruck games (in downhill and slalom) as well as a silver medal in the giant slalom.