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.