Jamaican bobsleigh team go cool running with a MINI Convertible to drive their training

Published by

Nicky Godding

With lockdown hampering traditional training techniques, the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team have had to get creative and take their rigorous regime to the slopes with a MINI Convertible.

The team, including sled pilot Shanwayne Stephens, 30, Dy’Neal Fe’ssal, 28, and Matthew Wilson, 30, have taken their training to another level and hit the UK’s largest indoor slope at The Snow Centre, Hemel Hempstead.

The trio pushed the MINI Convertible, manufactured at Cowley in Oxford, wrapped in the unmissable colours of the Jamaican flag, up and down the snowy incline for the ultimate resistance training, aiming to get an edge on their competition ahead of their gruelling winter schedule.

Shanwayne said “This second lockdown has been even harder on our training. Matt and Dy’Neal are new to the team so we’re focusing on gelling together as a team and getting them up to speed – they have never been in a bobsled or even seen one yet! Pushing the MINI here may seem like a bit of fun but this has been an important exercise, just being on ice is completely different to training in the summer – the toll on your body is entirely different and you use energy in different ways. The Snow Centre is only -3 degrees, that’s pretty mild compared to what we’re normally in, and they’re already complaining about the cold!”

In summer during lockdown 1.0 Shanwayne and other fellow teammate Nimroy Turgott kept up their fitness by building a home gym and using the MINI as a makeshift prowler.

Currently training to qualify for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, as well as various competitions across North America and Europe this season, the team’s next major event will be the World Championships in Lake Placid, New York, in February 2021.

Shanwayne added “We have a big task ahead of us, but it is doable”.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.