CLOSER TO HISTORY
Winter Olympics qualifications give Stokes hope of fast-forwarding 2034 plan
Published:Wednesday | January 21, 2026 | 12:09 AMGregory Bryce/Staff Reporter
With an overarching plan of a podium finish by the 2034 Winter Olympic Games, Chris Stokes, president of the Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, (JBSF) said qualification to the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games was years in the making.
Jamaica has qualified for the women’s mono-bob, the two-man bobsleigh, and the four-man bobsleigh races at the upcoming Winter Games.
Mica Moore has qualified for the mono-bob, and pilot Shane Pitter and his crew of Joel Fearon, Nimroy Turgott, and Junior Harris qualified for the two-man bobsleigh.
Pitter is also the pilot of the four-man bobsleigh team alongside Tyquendo Tracey, Andrae Dacres, Harris, and Fearon.
Stokes said their qualifications to the Games were not by chance but the result of careful planning by the JBSF.
He explained that for the last three years, they have been hard at work to create a national programme that would see Jamaica become a powerhouse in the sport.
Two key components of this plan were to create a strong local pool of athletes and an internationally renowned coach to lead the charge.
“In January 2023, we started a programme to get a team on the podium by the 2034 Olympics in Park City, Utah. That was the goal of the programme,” Stokes explained.
“We had recruited very young athletes, brand-new athletes, and we also made two other important moves,” he continued.
“We retained the most successful active coach in bobsleigh in the person of Todd Hays, who himself was a silver medallist from the 2002 games in Park City, Utah.”
The right profile
Stokes said Hays’ pedigree, both as an athlete and a coach, meant he had the right profile to head the programme.
He explained that the coach was drawn to the challenge of reviving the island’s bobsleigh ambitions and felt it would be one of the world’s greatest sporting achievements.
“He has coached Canada, Russia, and the United States, and he has coached athletes who have won multiple medals for Canada and the United States,” Stokes said of head coach Hays.
“He’s much in demand, but he’s intrigued by the possibility, or the opportunity, to put Jamaica on the Olympic podium, and as he describes it, it will be the greatest story ever told in sports.”
Stokes added: “He has committed himself to that. He committed himself to that 10-year programme.”
Their qualification to the 2026 Winter Games is seen as a major step in their plans, with Stokes saying it might see them achieving a podium finish before their 2034 target.
“We went into the 2025-26 season at peace with ourselves that committing to the 10-year podium programme would mean that there’s a strong possibility that we would not qualify for 2026,” he said,
“But what quickly became evident, based on the effort that has been put in over the last three or four years, we found ourselves very quickly being the top of the pack in the North American circuit, which is the circuit we chose to try to qualify on.”
Stokes continued, “The first thing that we have done is brought back 2034 to 2030 in terms of being solidly in the frame for an Olympic medal.”
Stokes said with this in mind, their focus will not particularly be on the podium but to test where they fall among the elites.
He explained that these Winter Games would be used to assess the work needed to be done before 2030.
“How far we’ll go, we don’t know because as I said, it’s uncharted territory,” Stokes mused.
“That is where we are. We have taken a moment to celebrate, but again, there’s much more in the tank. So we want to continue to test our boundaries and our limits and see where the crew is now.”
The Winter Games are set take place from February 6 to February 22.