T&T’s chances of a medal at the Win­ter Olympic Games re­sume to­day as a four-man bob­sleigh team, be­ing led by cap­tain Ax­el Brown, will springs in­to ac­tion from 10 am Sat­ur­day morn­ing at the Mi­lano Corti­na Cen­tre in Italy. They will be re­quired to con­test two races.

​Brown and the oth­er mem­bers of the team–Xaver­ri Williams, Sha­keel John, and De Aun­dre John, with Mic­ah Moore as the spare ath­lete–en­joyed suc­cess at a qual­i­fi­er at the Whistler Slid­ing Cen­tre in North Van­cou­ver last year. They se­cured fifth and fourth-place fin­ish­es in the four-man event, earn­ing a po­si­tion on an ex­tend­ed podi­um.

At those races, the T&T team was cred­it­ed for pro­duc­ing the fastest speed in both races among the teams; still, Brown said they just could not put the full runs to­geth­er to get on­to the main podi­um.

Brown told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that his­to­ry will be made, as it’s the first time they’re hav­ing a four-man team.

“We're all very ex­cit­ed to get in the 4-man. This is what we've been build­ing for the last three years. It's the first time T&T has ever had a 4-man team, so we're aware we're mak­ing his­to­ry just by be­ing there.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I've on­ly had six runs ever in the 4-man at this track, so ob­vi­ous­ly we're at a big dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to the rest of the field. How­ev­er, I feel more com­fort­able in the 4-man than in the 2-man, so I'm up for the chal­lenge, and hope­ful­ly we can close the gap.”

Last week­end, the coun­try’s two-man bob­sleigh team of Brown and De Aun­dre John fin­ished 25th with a com­bined time of 1:54.19 from two races. In their first heat, the pair of Brown and John stopped the clock at 57.22, as they fin­ished be­hind by 2.54 for a 25th spot. In the sec­ond heat, the T&T duo did not fin­ish too far off the first, cross­ing the line in 56.97 for an­oth­er over­all 25th-place.

Apart from them, T&T al­so had first-time per­for­mances from Nikhil Al­leyne and Em­ma Gat­cliffe, who both con­test­ed the Men's and Women's Gi­ant Slalom events. Al­leyne, on Sat­ur­day, drove home with the 52nd po­si­tion over­all, af­ter post­ing a time of 1:27.79 in Run 1, and then 1:19.93 in Run 2.

Gat­cliffe, a stu­dent of the St Lawrence Uni­ver­si­ty, was 45th over­all with a com­bined time of 2:28.19.