The stage is now set for this coun­try's bob­sled team of Ax­el Brown, Shomari John, Tom Har­ris and Sha­keel John to con­test next month's 2022 Bei­jing Win­ter Olympic Games, Feb­ru­ary 4-20, and there­by con­tin­ue to build on a foun­da­tion that was laid down by Gre­go­ry Sun and Cur­tis Har­ry back in 1992.

At a T&TOC vir­tu­al press brief­ing on Wednes­day the team's qual­i­fi­ca­tion was re­vealed and Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) paid recog­ni­tion to all in­volved in the achieve­ment and re­quest­ed on­ly that the team sim­ply do their best and rep­re­sent with pride.

This re­quest was du­ly ac­cept­ed by team cap­tain and dri­ver Brown who told the me­dia he can­not wait for the chal­lenge. Brown, a na­tive of Great Britain who has T&T parent­age, said while he has rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try of his birth be­fore, the last few months has meant so much to him.

Un­der Brown's lead­er­ship, cou­pled with the de­sire by all mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in the Win­ter Games, the T&T team had se­cured its berth since be­fore the Christ­mas hol­i­days, hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly at the North Amer­i­can cir­cuit which is one of three qual­i­fi­ca­tion routes.

They need­ed to be ranked among the top 30 sleds in the world or among the 19 na­tions. T&T en­tered the Christ­mas hol­i­days at 14th in the world and now sits at 17th.

Brown said his team could have bet­tered than po­si­tion but in­stead opt­ed to fine-tune.

" We were in the for­tu­nate po­si­tion of know­ing that we were in good stand­ings since be­fore Christ­mas so we've been able to plan these months since Christ­mas to try and op­ti­mize our chances at the Olympics, which in this case, meant not go­ing to Eu­rope to gain any more points, whether there was a risk of covid or sig­nif­i­cant trav­el is­sues in bring­ing every­one to North Amer­i­ca.

In­stead, we've been up and right now where we are is in Cal­gary in Cana­da where we've been able to train at an ice­house, es­sen­tial­ly at an in­door push track so we can prac­tice the push­ing side of things be­cause that has been our biggest hur­dle to over­come

I've got plen­ty of ex­pe­ri­ence dri­ving but the new ath­letes don't have a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence push­ing, so we de­cid­ed that three weeks at Cal­gary is the best way to pre­pare rather than risk­ing any covid in­fec­tion or any­thing sim­i­lar to that by go­ing to Eu­rope.

There have been sev­er­al teams, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, to get hit by COVID-19," Brown ex­plained.

T&T's ex­is­tence came cour­tesy of in­spi­ra­tion from the Ja­maican bob­sled team at the 1988 Win­ter Games and ac­cord­ing to Lewis, the team will be here for the long term. Shomari, a for­mer track and field ath­lete, told the au­di­ence it was a plea­sure to start do­ing bob­sled, a sport he nev­er ex­pect­ed to do.

The ex­pe­ri­ence in the sport he said has been a good one.