Initially, the Jamaican bobsled team’s presence at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary was viewed by many as a novelty—a team from a country without winter competing in the Winter Olympics. But the athletes showed their prowess in both the two-man and four-man bobsled competitions, holding their own against teams representing countries with long histories in the sport. Cool Runnings, a highly fictionalized account of the team’s story, became a box-office smash for Disney in 1993. The man who built the Jamaican team into international competitors, three time US Olympian Howard Siler, spent much of his adult life in the North Country.
Siler was an athletic man, standing six feet tall
