Forget Cool Runnings: Inside the real Jamaican bobsled team
Lives Less Ordinary

Forget Cool Runnings: Inside the real Jamaican bobsled team

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 5, 202639 min
  • Documentary
  • Sport

Ex army officer Devon Harris was part of the historic Olympic bobsleigh team that inspired the film Cool Runnings, but Hollywood only got half the story. Devon grew up in a tough area of Kingston, Jamaica, called Olympic Gardens. He dreamed of taking part in the Olympics, but living on a tropical island meant winter sports were never on his radar. For him, school was his haven away from the violence he witnessed in his neighbourhood and he worked hard in the classroom and on the sports field so that he could one day fulfil his dream...

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. episodes twice a week. Find the Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. This my third run and I am so into it and I'm screaming yeehaw! You think I got transformed into a

1:11

cowboy and I'm shouting at the top of my lungs I'm like go Sammy go go go go go go! I'm still scared though I'm still scared but I'm hooked like this is my sport now. The year is 1988, the occasion, the Winter Olympics. The sport is bobsled in North American and the team is from Jamaica. Is this starting to ring any bells? The jaw-dropping story of

1:46

how a team from the tropics competed in an icy sport was turned into a smash hit comic film called Cool Runnings in the early 90s. But there's a non-Disney version that's even more twisty and turny, and Devon Harris is here to share it. I'm Jo Fidgen and this is Live's Less Ordinary from the BBC World Service.

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