The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Bobsleigh crew train by pushing mini in street
Jamaican winter Olympics hopefuls beat lockdown with unusual training routine in Peterborough
Cool Runnings has come to the streets of Peterborough with members of the Jamaican bobsleigh team keeping fit by pushing a Mini Cooper around the city’s streets.
Remarkably, Shanwayne Stephens and teammate Nimroy Turgott, who have been isolating with each other since the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown, have taken to pushing the car owned by Shanwayne’s fiance Amy to stay in shape.
Shanwayne said: “Since the lockdown began we’ve had to make do with what we’ve got.
“We’ve been pushing my fiance’s car up and down the street and have made a squat rack in the back garden.
“Pushing the car is like resistance training for us. The car is a similar weight to the sled so it helps. My fiance just tells me not to crash it.
“I know in the movie in Cool Runnings they didn’t have the correct equipment so I feel like we’re living up to their spirit and improvising as best as we can.”
Shanwayne, aged 29, moved to Peterborough from Jamaica when he was 11 yearsold and serves in the RAF. Due to his military connections and Jamaican heritage he began representing the country’s bobsleigh team in 2017 in the prime position as the sleigh’s driver.
In disappointment mirrored in the hit 1993 movie Cool Runnings, Shanwayne sadly missed out on qualifying for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games by just one spot.
However, he and his teammate are training hard so they can compete at the Winter Games in Beijing in 2022.
Shanwayne added: “As part of our training we normally would use prowlers in the gym but with them shut down we had to create a new way to train. We’ve only been pushing the mini down our street but people think we’ve done laps of the whole city !
“Nimroy came over to do some training for the summer so he was already staying at my house and then we went in to lockdown so he stayed. We’ve had to keep up with
“We’ve built our own gym set in the garden out of timber, we’ve also built weights out of paint pots filled with cement!
“Staying together has built up morale and brought us a lot closer together as a team. The closer we are, the better we perform.
“Being in the RAF, fitness is a big part of our role but doing training for bobsleighing it is a whole different league.”
The pair’s ambition has also received a boost - quite literally - from Virgin Media.
Unfortunately, while gardening, Shanwayne accidentally severed a cable which stopped his internet connection. The pair stream point-ofview track videos where they sit on the floor and visualise themselves barrelling down hairpin bends, as well as sending videos and aerial drone footage of their workouts to their coach.
And when engineer Paul Roach attended the property to fix the damaged cable he was stunned to find out who his clients were.
Paul told Shanwayne and Nimroy he has his own family connection to Jamaica and has now arranged for their broadband speeds to be boosted at no extra charge to help them achieve their Olympic dream.
Shanwanye said: “This broadband boost is brilliant and will help when I’m streaming videos and will improve my visualisation of belting down the bob run track.”
Paul said: “I can’t believe I got to meet the real life Cool Runnings! It’s great we’ve given Shanwayne and Nimroy a broadband boost with blisteringly fast speeds to give them the edge with their training so they can conquer the bob run and make it to Beijing.”
Paul’s teammate, Ethan, has set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds to help Shanwanye and Nimroy with their training. Donations can be made at: https://www.gofundme. com/f/jamaican-bobsledteam-2020.