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What were the odds on a four-man Jamaican bobsleigh team making the Winter Olympics? About as long as me, Irving Blitzer, becoming the next President of the United States! I told them there were too many problems. Snow: they didn't have any. Time: they didn't have any. It was three months to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. And me: they didn't have me. I was making my living as a bookie in Jamaica and after being caught cheating in the bobsleigh I just didn’t want to do i

Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash People have been laughing at me all my life. From school in Cheltenham to the ski jump slopes of Calgary in the 1988 Winter Olympics. Even my own dad told me: “You’re not an athlete!” I didn’t mind. After all, I got the last laugh! I’d tell them that I’d been following a dream I had since I was a kid: to represent my country at the Olympics. I just needed to find the right sport. I got the skiing bug on a school trip at 13, learned to ski on

When the music begins, we’re kneeling on the ice with our heads looking down at our shoulders. We bring our heads up and for one second, I look in Jayne’s eyes. I can see how far we’ve come and how much we’ve sacrificed to get here. How hard we’ve worked to get to the Olympic ice dance final! Our arms are swaying, and we keep time with Ravel’s Bolero, just like we’d practised for so long. I remember the guy at the practice rink scratching his head when he saw us kneeling down