Jamaican sprinter-turned-bobsledder Tyquendo Tracey has said Lewis Hamilton would do “very well” if he swapped Formula 1 tracks for the ice of the Winter Olympics.
Tracey is competing at the Milan-Cortina Games with the Jamaican four-man bobsleigh team, having previously represented his country as a sprinter at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo five years ago
He is aiming to follow in the footsteps of the crew who rose to fame at the 1988 Winter Olympics, inspiring the 1993 Disney film “Cool Runnings” — which Hamilton says is his favourite movie.
While seven-time F1 champion Hamilton, 41, remains focused on racing for Ferrari rather than sliding down an icy track for now, Tracey believes Hamilton’s skillset would translate well to bobsleigh.
“I think he [Hamilton] would do well,” F1 fan Tracey told Reuters Television. “When you see people like Lewis Hamilton going around curves [at] 200-250 miles an hour, he’s going to have the eye for it to be able to manoeuvre a sled … so, personally, I think he would do very well.”
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Hamilton, whose paternal grandparents are from the Caribbean island of Grenada, has often spoken about how Cool Runnings influenced him growing up and how it inspired him to break into a predominantly white sport.
He recently reiterated his interest in bobsleigh in a Ferrari team video.
“If I was to do a Winter Olympic sport, it would be bobsledding,” he said. “I always wanted to do bobsledding.
“There’s no Grenadian team, so maybe I would take my best friend Jan and then get a couple of other characters from Grenada and then create a bobsleigh team.”