SAMA­KI FE­LI­CIAN

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

T&T’s bob­sleigh team con­tin­ues to carve out its place in sport­ing his­to­ry, be­com­ing the first Caribbean team in near­ly 30 years to com­pete at the Bob­sleigh World Cup.

The “So­ca Slid­ers” com­pet­ed at the Olympia Bob Run in St Moritz-Cele­ri­na, Switzer­land, the world’s old­est track and the birth­place of bob­sleigh rac­ing.

Led by dri­ver Ax­el Browne and fea­tur­ing team mem­bers De­An­dre and Shaquille John, along with Xaver­ri Williams, the team nar­row­ly missed a top-20 fin­ish by just 0.18 sec­onds, a re­sult that would have qual­i­fied them for the fi­nal heat.

“For us to be out there alone was his­to­ry-mak­ing, but for us to al­so beat Aus­tria and Italy, chal­leng­ing for a fi­nal heap was some­thing spe­cial,” Browne said.

Com­pet­ing in the first of nine World Cup events this sea­son, the team al­so had to con­tend with the ab­sence of their top push ath­lete, Tom Har­ris, who is re­cov­er­ing from a frac­tured wrist. Har­ris is ex­pect­ed to re­join the squad for the fi­nal six races of the sea­son, pro­vid­ing a boost to their chances of achiev­ing a top-20 fin­ish.

The Bob­sleigh World Cup is one of the sport’s high­est lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion, com­pa­ra­ble to track and field’s Di­a­mond League. Qual­i­fy­ing for the event re­quires meet­ing strict cri­te­ria through con­ti­nen­tal cham­pi­onships like the North Amer­i­can and Eu­ro­pean Cups, where T&T has been com­pet­ing in re­cent years.

Re­flect­ing on the team’s progress, Browne laid out what is ahead for the “So­ca Slid­ers”.

“Go­ing for­ward we have eight more of those races, which is sim­i­lar to the F1 for any­one fa­mil­iar with that, we will train and race at one cir­cuit for a week and then we move to a next and a next,” he said.

The team is fo­cused on con­tin­u­ing its up­ward tra­jec­to­ry. It hopes to qual­i­fy for the 2026 Win­ter Olympics in Mi­lan in both the two-man and four-man events, a feat that would mark an­oth­er first for T&T.

The “So­ca Slid­ers” will again at­tempt a top-20 fin­ish next week­end in leg two of the IB­SF World Cup.