From strangers to dream chasers

When bobsleigh pilot Axel Brown and his brakeman Andre Marcano jumped into the two-man sled emblazoned with Trinidad and Tobago's flag on Monday, the duo became the country's first Winter Olympians in 20 years.

"We got a lot of love and support from social media. Many people are watching our competition and my phone was ringing and ringing again after the first run," Marcano told Xinhua.

Only six months ago, the pair were strangers. At that time, Marcano was just a track and field athlete. He had dreams of being an Olympian, but they had so far been out of his reach.

When the 35-year-old sprinter saw Brown's call for a sled partner on Instagram, he decided to get in touch.

"I gave him some other suggestions of people who can be good, but he decided to let me try. At the beginning, I hesitated," said Marcano.

Brown said, "I had to be persistent, because understandably he was a bit sceptical at first, but it worked out because we're here at an Olympics."

British-born Brown first saw the bobsleigh event at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. "I saw the athletes during the bobsleigh and thought, that's really cool. I reckoned I could do that and then made the switch," said the 29-year-old pilot.

After deep consideration, Brown decided to move from Britain to Trinidad and Tobago last summer, in order to compete for his mother's homeland.

"I knew that, as a nation, Trinidad and Tobago has a lot of speed, so I just started researching people," Brown said. In order to secure a berth in Beijing 2022, the duo began to practice in a country without ice or snow.

"No one around the world can train during the summer, because this sport only exists in the winter. In that sense, we're not at a huge disadvantage. We train for weight lifting and sprinting. And then when the winter comes, we translate that onto the ice," Brown told Xinhua.

The team passed the Olympic qualifiers by scoring enough points in the North American Cup, and secured a Beijing 2022 ticket in December 2021.

Bobsleigh is an expensive sport. It cost the duo $10,900 just to bring their bobsleds to China.

"We rely entirely on sponsors and personal savings. We're not a big nation with millions of pounds of government funding," Brown said.

"What we're doing means so much to so many people, because we're not just a face in the crowd. We're the first people here in 20 years. All of Trinidad is behind us."

Before participating at Beijing 2022, Marcano had to take unpaid leave from his job as a high school physical education teacher.