Cheating, hunger and no lucky eggs: Dark truth behind the real-life bobsleighers of Cool Runnings
Cool Runnings tells the story of one of the Olympics Games' most memorable moments – but not exactly as it happened.
The Disney classic is loosely based on the debut of the Jamaican national bobsleigh team at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.
The key word there is loosely.
Cool Runnings airs Tuesday, January 13 at 8.30pm on Channel 9.
Catch the classic on Channel 9 tonight. Disney
Director Jon Turteltaub once told Entertainment Weekly the story was refined again and again to make a "better movie", but that it wasn't always truthful to the real tale.
"We would never get away today with the changes we made to the true story," he said.
Keep reading for all the differences between the movie and the real life story of the Jamaican bobsleighers.
The characters were not based on the real bobsleighers
In the film, the Jamaican bobsleigh team is formed by four misfits made up of disqualified sprinters and a pushcart derby champion.
The real team was recruited from the army after two American businessmen came up with the idea after seeing pushcart derby, a popular sporting event in Jamaica.
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John Candy played coach Irv in the beloved film. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
They had trouble convincing real elite sprinters to join the team, so they turned to the army.
The team was made up of Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Michael White and Chris Stokes.
Chris was Dudley's brother. A successful track and field athlete, he was in Calgary to watch when the team suffered an injury – prompting him to sub in at the last minute.
It wasn't as funny in real life
Cool Runnings is a feel-good comedy, but the actual journey wasn't as fun-filled as it looked.
While in the film it appears like the team had barely touched ice before the Olympics, in reality the team spent months training.
Dudley Stokes (left) and the real Jamaican bobsleigh team. Instagram @talsto360live
"Actually doing it was no comedy. There were nights we went hungry. There were times living five to a room, there were fights, anger and doubt," original team member Dudley Stokes shared during a 2016 Reddit Ask Me Anything.
"Not to mention the small matter of going downhill at 80mph [130 km/h], three-four times an afternoon. It was much harder, with a lot less laughter."
The other teams were not really hostile
Movies need adversaries, but negativity from other competitors was thankfully not something the real team faced.
"Very few people showed any resentment," Stokes said.
"We were preparing for the Olympics for three months in Europe and the US, we got a lot of help from a lot of good people and made some good friends."
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In reality the Jamican team was met with plenty of support from their competitors. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
He said the "bad blood" was "overplayed".
"I'm still in touch with athletes, mostly from bobsleigh. We do keep in touch with each other and what we're doing."
Their real coach was not a cheat
In the film, John Candy played coach Irv Blitzer – a disgraced former gold medallist who was disqualified for cheating at the 1972 Olympic Games.
Irv Blitzer might have been a cheater but real-life coach Howard Siler definitely was not! Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
In reality, the team was coached by Howard Siler, an American who competed in two Olympics before becoming an insurance executive.
"The history of their coach being a cheater with the American team was a complete fabrication, and that was just a way of building some depth into that movie character," director Turteltaub said.
The film's iconic 'walk' never happened
It's perhaps the most famous scene in the movie: a mechanical failure causes the team's sleigh to crash, so they pick it up and carry it across the finish line to rapturous applause.
It's true that the team did crash during the Olympic Games, but not quite like that.
Rather than a mechanical failure, it was driver error that caused a crash on the third of four runs.
The real Jamaican bobsleigh team celebrate one of their first sponsors. Instagram @talsto360live
The sleigh also weighed almost 300 kilograms, making it nearly impossible to carry.
Instead, the athletes walked alongside while support staff pushed it to the finish line, but they did not officially finish the race and were disqualified.
Plenty of details were invented for the film
Some of the film's most memorable details never actually happened.
The lucky egg held by Sanka Coffie (Doug E. Doug) in the movie wasn't a superstition held by any of the real athletes and they never actually said the iconic "feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme" chant.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Lots of interesting details never made it at all
Plenty was made up, while other details from this iconic tale were left out completely.
One even involved royalty.
"Prince Albert of Monaco was hugely instrumental in influencing the Bobsleigh Federation in allowing the Jamaicans to compete, and we never could find a way to make that work," Turteltaub said.
The qualification process was also changed. In reality, the team had to compete in Austria to qualify for the Olympic Games but to simplify the film, it depicted them qualifying in Calgary instead.
Cool Runnings airs Tuesday, January 13 at 8.30pm on Channel 9.
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