One of the hollywood-style stories of the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang threatens to become a muddy battle: Former bobsleigh driver Sandra Kiriasis left the Jamaican women’s bobsleigh team shortly before the start of the Olympic races after severe differences with the rest of the coaching team.
Instead of looking forward to a similar spectacle as in 1988 at the legendary Jamaican men’s bob, the team from the Caribbean is fighting. The former German coach is now demanding money from the association.
“You wanted to keep me as a train coach, but I wasn’t supposed to be in contact with the athletes anymore. And of course that doesn’t work,”the 2006 Olympic champion told SID in Pyeongchang. She does not know the exact reasons for the planned degradation, but suspects “an intrigue in the coaching staff. I guess I’ve never been so disappointed in my sportsman’s life”.
The Jamaican bobsleigh women qualified for the Olympic Games for the first time and received a lot of attention because they made the jump to the Winter Games exactly 30 years after their famous countrymen.
On the way there Kiriasis has, according to her own statement,”organized a bobsleigh, provided a pair of private runners” and, through her contacts, also “helped the federation to get complete equipment for driving and preparing”. The federation has thereby saved a lot of money, Kiriasis demands now a compensation payment.
Otherwise, she will ask for the material to be returned, which would mean that Team Jamaica would not be able to participate in the races on Tuesday and Wednesday. This would accept Kiriasis:”I have to protect myself, I can’t accept it.”
The Jamaicans, on the other hand, do not want to know anything about such demands or demands on the part of the Germans. In a statement to the SID, the association emphasized that the bob was not Kiriasis. Rather, the association made it sound that Kiriasis did not always have the best for the team in mind:”We have reorganized the team so that it can call on the best possible performance,”the statement said. Kiriasis also decided not to continue working with the association.
“We are very disappointed with her decision and thank her for her invaluable contribution to the success of the first Jamaican women’s bobsleigh team,” she added:”We do not expect our equipment to change, and her departure will not” affect the federation or the performance of our athletes at the Winter Games “.
Kiriasis emphasized that her relationship with the female athletes around pilot Jazmine Fenlator is intact and said,”They told me that they don’t understand it and that they have no problem with me,”she said.
Fenlator, who has dual citizenship, finished eleventh for the USA in the 2014 Winter Games on a two-man bob with hurdle sprinter Lolo Jones. Her pusher Carrie Russell won gold with the Jamaican 4×100 m relay in 2013 at the World Championships in Athletics in Moscow.