The Jamaican bobsled team is back at the 2026 Winter Olympics, participating for just the fifth time in the country’s history. As you might expect, the small Caribbean island has competed in only 10 Winter Games and has yet to win a medal. By contrast, Jamaica has won 94 medals in the Summer Olympics. This year, the team is entered in the women’s monobob, two-man, and four-man bobsled events.
Qualifying for the Games in Italy has many fans feeling nostalgic for the 1988 movie “Cool Runnings,” which dramatized the country’s first-ever trip to the Winter Olympics in bobsled.
Let’s take a look back at how accurate the film was compared with the historic 1988 Jamaican bobsled team.
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Is ‘Cool Runnings’ based on a true story?
Yes, “Cool Runnings” is based on the true story of the two- and four-man Jamaican bobsled team that qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The team consisted of Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Michael White and Chris Stokes. Although the team inspired the movie, Disney took some creative liberties with the project to put it lightly.
“It’s a feature Disney film, not much in it actually happened in real life,” Stokes said of the movie on Reddit.
Even the film’s director, Jon Turteltaub, admits to altering the story a good bit.
“We just kept refining the true story to make it into a better movie,” Turteltaub said via Entertainment Weekly. “We would never get away today with the changes we made to the true story.
“The feeling is the same,” the director continued. “The tone is the same. The ambition is the same. The absurdity was the same. And the main key events were the same.”
Without spoiling the movie, which is one of the highest-grossing sports comedies in history, there were several parts of the movie that strayed from the real 1988 team. The biggest ones included the team’s coach, George Fitch, being a disgraced bobsledder, the animosity that other teams had towards the Jamaicans, using an egg during training and how the team qualified.
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1988 Jamaican bobsled team
The team consisted of Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, and Michael White. Initially, Caswell Allen was the fourth teammate, but he suffered an injury before the Olympics began. Alternate Chris Stokes filled in for him.
The team’s coach, George Finch, had never actually done bobsled before. The former U.S. trade diplomat came up with the idea of putting together a bobsled team in Jamaica while discussing sports with a friend on the island.
“On a per capita basis, Jamaica wins more medals in the Summer Olympics than anybody else,” Finch said in 2014 via 42. “And it boasts track-and-field strengths that could easily cross over to winter competition.
“Bobsleigh was the sport because it best suits Jamaica’s skills — speed. Half the race is how quickly you can push this 600-pound object before you get in. That’s speed. That’s Jamaica.”
Just as the Jamaicans began training, Finch lost his fortune in the October 1987 “Black Monday” stock market crash. The coach was bankrolling the team, but as a result, they had to crowd into one hotel room and borrow sleds to train.
With help from the Jamaican Defense Force, Finch recruited a four-man team. Jamaican military officials agreed to assist in finding contenders among their servicemen, regarding bobsleigh as an “army sport.” Here’s a rundown of the roster.
Dudley “Tal” Stokes
To lead the team, Jamaica turned to military helicopter pilot Dudley Stokes.
“The whole undertaking looked very risky,” Stokes said via the History Channel. “Never mind the sport, but also the funding, the travel and the fact that we were planning to become an Olympic team in five months from ground zero. Those were ambitious, ambitious things.”
Via a Stokes recollection of getting recruited, via Newsweek:
Two men who knew Col. Barnes, George Fitch and William Maloney, wanted to create a Jamaican bobsled team and had told him that they needed athletes, and someone with good hand eye coordination to drive the sled. This was in August in 1987, the Winter Olympics were in February of 1988.
It was very brazen, but Col. Barnes said he knew the right men. It was explained to me straight away that because I flew helicopters I may be able to drive the sled. But I had no idea what a bobsled was at all; I think I had seen a 15 second clip, some years before, of one going down the ice. I had thought it was insane.
Stokes served as the president of the Jamaican Bobsleigh Federation for four years after the 1988 games, and is now a public speaker.
Devon Harris
Devon Harris grew up in Jamaica playing football and running track and field. Although he had dreams of representing Jamaica in track at the Olympics, he joined the army instead.
Harris was a lieutenant in the Second Battalion when he saw the ad about bobsled in the weekly army publication called “Force Orders” in September 1987. Per his Wikipedia page, the ad called for anyone who wished to “undergo rigorous and dangerous training” to represent Jamaica in the Winter Olympics. He was convinced to try out by his colonel, Lt. Col Alan Douglas. At training, Harris had the fastest push time.
Michael White
White competed in the 1988 games when he was 24. A native of Jamaica, White competed in the two-mad bobsled even along with Stokes. There is very little information about White, other than him being on the four-man team.
Caswell Allen
Allen was the original fourth man on the team, but was injured during a training session in Calgary. That prompted the team to input Dudley’s brother, Chris, at the last minute.
Chris Stokes
Stokes’ addition to the team was pretty remarkable. He was added to a four-man team for the injured Allen at the very last minute. Chris was a sprinter who had never run bobsled before, and he was only there with the team to support his brother at the Olympics.
What place did the Jamaica bobsled team get in 1988?
In the two-man race, Stokes and White finished 30th overall, all things considered, an impressive finish for the new Jamaican team. The four-man group didn’t end up finishing, however.
Jamaica bobsled crash
On the team’s third run attempt as a four-man crew, with Stokes’ brother included, the bobsled tragically crashed.
Although the start looked clean, even setting the seventh-fastest start in the event, Stokes lost control of the sled on one of the turns, which careened the bobsled off the track and flipped on top of the athletes
“For me personally, that was an intense embarrassment,” Stokes said of the crash. “I was unaccustomed to failure in my life up to that point.”
But the public reception of the team—and the inspiring nature of them even making the games—was appreciated by him.
”I thought that this would be devastating and that I would be ridiculed and that people would shun me,” he said. “I was surprised at the reception, which, in retrospect, had to do with the sheer audacity of going into the snow … It looked very strange to Jamaicans who had never seen anything like this, and that endeared us to the population.”
Cool Runnings cast
Leon Robinson as team leader Derice Bannock
Leon Robinson portrayed Dudley Stokes as the team’s leader. In a recent interview with the Independent, Robinson says he had some disagreements during the film about the Jamaican accent used:
“They wanted me to sound like a black Aladdin,” Leon said. “They wanted a Disney version of [the accent]. It was tough because if anybody wants to be authentic, it’s me – but I’m a professional and I had to do the job.” Lewis and Yoba remember the situation, too. “They were like ‘Don’t show their crotch’ because it was Disney and a family film,” laughs Lewis. “They thought we were going to have these packages.”
Robinson built a steady career across film, television, racking up more than 80 credits. In recent years, he starred in “The Chi,” “Blue Bloods” and “City on a Hill.”
Doug E. Doug as Sanka Coffie,
Doug E. Doug played Sanka Coffie, and is credited with having some of the funnier moments in the movie. He sleds with the infamous lucky egg from the movie.
Since the film’s release, he voiced the jellyfish Bernie in the 2004 animated hit “Shark Tale” and most recently directed and starred in the 2023 comedy drama “Into The Weeds“.
Rawle D. Lewis as Junior Bevil,
Rawle D. Lewis played Junior Bell in the movie. He is now 52 years old, and his post-“Cool Runnings” credits include the 2001 Kevin Spacey movie “K-PAX,” and Netflix’s “Narcos: Mexico,” where he played the role of a detective.
Malik Yoba as Yul Brenner
Malik Yoba played Yul Brenner, which is thought to represent Devon Harris. The movie put Yoba on the map, as he starred in a lead role of Detective J. C. Williams on the police drama “New York Undercover,” and also appeared in several other series’, including, “That’s So Raven,” “The Good Wife,” and “Empire.” He also starred in the one-man stage play, “Harlem to Hollywood,” at Apollo Theater in New York in 2019.
John Candy as Irv,
Irv was who is supposed to be loosely based on the coach George Fitch, although there were some key differences, as noted above.
When did John Candy die?
John Candy tragically passed away in 1994, just a year after the movie’s release. He was just 43 years old.. He suffered a heart attack in his sleep, while filming the movie “Wagons East” in Durango, Mexico. He left behind a wife, Rosemary Hobor, and their two children.
Although the cause of death was his heart attack, Candy was public about his battle with drugs and alcohol, as well as his diet and family history of heart trouble.
MORE: Jim Craig discusses Netflix doc on 1980’s Miracle team
Cool Runnings quotes
There are several great quotes from this movie. Some of the classics:
“Sanka you dead?
“Ya, mon.”
Yul Brenner: “Look in the mirror, and tell me what you see!”
Junior Bevill: “I see Junior.”
Yul Brenner: “You see Junior? Well, let me tell you what I see. I see pride! I see power! I see a bad-a– mother who don’t take no crap off of nobody!”
Sanka Coffie: “So what are we gunna name the sled?”
Junior Bevill: How about “Tallulah?”
Sanka Coffie: “Tallulah! Hahaha! Tallulah! Sounds like a 2 dollar hooker! Where you come up with that?”
Junior Bevill: “That’s my mother’s name.”
Chant before races
One of the most iconic parts of this movie is the “feel the rythym feel the rhyme song chanted before races:
Jamaica got a bobsled team song
The “Jamaica, we have a bobsled team” song is also a favorite:
Where to stream Cool Runnings
Cool Runnings can be streamed on Disney +, but is also available for purchased on the likes of Hulu, Apple TV and various other platforms.
