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Jamaican bobsled team crowdfunds for coach

Winston Watts of Jamaica pilots a bobsleigh practice run ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at the Sanki Sliding Center. (Photo: Getty Images)
Winston Watts of Jamaica pilots a bobsleigh practice run ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at the Sanki Sliding Center. (Photo: Getty Images)

This might be the sequel to Cool Runnings everyone has been waiting for.

The Jamaican Bobsled team needs a coach and with John Candy’s fictional character of Irv Blitzer nowhere to be found, the squad has started a Go Fund Me page to try and fund/find a coach.

The team is looking to raise $60,000 and after eight days, they’ve managed to get $1,125 in donations.

From the Go Fund Me Page:

The Winter Olympics are in just over a year, and we are in the midst of our training. With trust in God, and each other, we are working as hard as we can; however, we are missing one thing-a coach.

We have the talent, the discipline and the determination, needed to contend in the 2018 Winter Olympics. Please support our efforts to raise enough funds to hire a coach. A coach is there to guide you, challenge you and push you when you think you have nothing more to give. They believe in you, when you don’t believe in yourself.

Thanks to Jamaica’s dominance as a sprinting powerhouse, the small island nation was able to launched a bobsled program in 1987. They competed at the Winter Games in Calgary a year later and inspired enough people to have Disney make a movie made about their travails in 1993.

Jamaica is hoping to qualify both men’s and women’s teams for the 2018 Pyeongchang Games – the 30th anniversary of their Olympic debut.

“With a coach on staff we believe we can not only contend for a medal, but also bring a medal home, and commemorate this outstanding achievement,” the team said in a statement.

The team participated at the Sochi Games – their first Olympic showing in more than a decade. Sled driver Winston Watt and Marvin Dixon raced in the two-man event and finished 29th.