Jamaican bobsledder, who competed for Team USA, fights through grief to make Olympic return


USA TODAY SPORTS
Dan Wolken, - Wednesday

BEIJING – Team Jamaica’s entrance to Friday’s opening ceremony was a joyous sight, with Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian leading a band of dancing, waving, gyrating bobsledders in unmistakably neon yellow pants

But for Fenlator-Victorian, every moment in Beijing is a struggle between joy and grief, between the emotions pulling her home and the understanding that this is where she needs to be, between the sense of accomplishment in just getting here and the sacrifices she made to bring her third trip to the Olympics into existence.

“I’m so happy to be here and press on and share that part of my journey,” she told USA TODAY Sports. “But I’d lying if I said it wasn’t extremely difficult.”

Raised in New Jersey and now living in Texas, Fenlator-Victorian knew full well when she left Team USA after the 2014 Olympics to compete under the Jamaican flag that she was choosing the harder road. In some ways, that was the point.

Just making it back here again, given the lack of funding and infrastructure while also trying to run her own social media and branding business, was going to be the capstone of a trailblazing career.

But on Dec. 28, while Fenlator-Victorian was home with her husband in Dallas on a short break between eight straight weeks on the road and Beijing, unspeakable tragedy struck. After two days of failing to get her 27-year-old sister Angelica to respond to texts, their mother found her dead in their Florida home.

Immediately, there was massive grief, doubt and regret. Fenlator-Victorian wondered whether she should even continue on the path toward these Games, and not just because she was uncertain of her own mental well-being.

Beyond the obvious process people go through when a loved one unexpectedly dies, there were responsibilities and bills and the logistics of caring for her mother, who has health challenges of her own. On every conceivable level, leaving for the other side of the world was going to be very, very hard.

“While I was there with my mom, I let her know I bought a one-way ticket, and if I have to move or stay with her long-term, that’s what I have to do,” Fenlator-Victorian said. “Anybody who knows her knows she’s very strong-willed and was adamant that I need to go. I kind of thought about it, and I let her know that if I were to go, this is the timeline and I’m not confident in her being home alone and navigating these things. But we talked about it further and decided it was time for me to go.”

'Nobody would be able to recognize the heartbreak'

In bobsled, you may not navigate the curves and slopes of the track correctly, but at least you know where they are. Right now, Fenlator-Victorian is on a different course where every day reveals a new emotional weight that she cannot prepare for, and she has no real sense of what life will be like when she returns home.

Even living in the moment here in Beijing isn’t easy. When she FaceTimed her mother after the opening ceremony, her next impulse was to call Angelica.

“And I can’t. She’s not here,” Fenlator-Victorian said. “And that’s a reality that every day feels like I’m still dreaming. The process of grief has no timeline, the process of dealing with that has its highs and lows.”

Fenlator-Victorian talks so openly about that grief because it’s real, and it’s just as much part of any Olympian’s story as the triumph in getting here. Whether that’s her sister’s death or one of her men’s bobsled teammates missing the first six months of his daughter’s life to qualify and train or another giving up their job and income in pursuit of this dream, they are all branches of the same tree.

“Our vibes, our dancing, our smiles – not to get emotional but nobody would be able to recognize the heartbreak, the near-giving up even the possible depression we all have faced,” she said. “The outpour of love and people who woke up early to physically just see me walk through opening ceremonies, whether they’re supporters I know or people I don’t know tagging me on Instagram with all of these amazing messages of positive energy, it kind of reiterates why I’m doing what I’m doing and how much it’s touched them and inspired them and motivated them to make moves in their own way.”

After all, that’s what competing for Jamaica was originally about for Fenlator-Victorian. As a former track and field athlete in college who was recruited into the U.S. bobsled program, she had the best of everything from health insurance, a stipend and endless training resources. She broke through in 2014, finishing 11th at the Sochi Olympics as a driver teamed with Lolo Jones.

Deciding to leave the U.S. team

In the end, though, the narrative around that celebrated team as the most diverse in the history of women’s bobsled wasn’t necessarily all it was cracked up to be. Though she knew there would be consequences to leaving, her frustration about perceived inequities in the U.S. system had reached a boiling point. She felt she could have a bigger impact by building a Jamaican team pretty much from scratch.

“I’m so grateful and honored to have been part of that Olympic team, those teammates I still consider them friends,” Fenlator-Victorian said. “But the system itself is very much tainted, and there’s multiple people who have left the sport because they no longer can mentally take jumping through those hoops and the treatment they faced and the politics behind it. And it’s often people of color within that system who step away.”

The decision to leave Team USA brought death threats, racial slurs and accusations that she was chasing money, she said. In fact, the opposite was true. Going to a smaller federation brought immeasurable challenges, including the loss of her ranking after she had established herself as one of the best in the world and the never-ending funding issues that continue to this day. There’s a link on her Instagram right now that sends people to a site selling sweatshirts where part of the proceeds go to paying her expenses.

“I wasn’t looking to fill my pockets and wasn’t looking for publicity,” she said. “What I was looking for was to feel I was being represented for myself, that I had a safe space that didn’t put me in a box and wasn’t discriminatory.”

Fenlator-Victorian thought making the 2018 Olympics and finishing 18th would be the end, but the addition of the women’s monobob event lured her back for one more shot. The circumstances, obviously, aren’t ideal. Beyond navigating her grief day by day, she is trying to make up ground on her competitors who were able to familiarize themselves with the Yanqing Sliding Center track at the test event in November.

After this, the 36-year-old will leave the sled behind to focus on her business, help bolster Team Jamaica from behind the scenes to secure long-term funding for the program and open a foundation in her sister’s name to support mental health causes.

But she is a competitor, and despite everything that’s happened over the last couple months, she plans to give it her best, last shot.

“Someone asked me earlier how important representation is to me and I really can’t put it into words,” she said. “It’s priceless. For someone to see someone that looks like them, comes from the same cultural identities as them representing themselves at some type of level they’d hope to aspire to opens the floodgates. Now I need to pass the torch.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jamaican bobsledder, who competed for Team USA, fights through grief to make Olympic return