A former international DJ has become Jamaica's first ever Olympic alpine skier, after only seven years doing the sport.
Benjamin Alexander grew up in London, and only began skiing in Whistler, Canada in 2015 while there working as a DJ.
Two years later, he starting turning his energy towards a bigger goal - the Winter Olympics - and in 2022, that dream came true.
“What you see is much easier to believe that you can do it and I hope that that’s what my story does as well, I’m hoping that Jamaica will always have alpine skiers at the Olympic Games from here going forward,” he told Breakfast.
His own inspiration was drawn from the much celebrated Jamaican bobsled team of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.
“Those guys in 1988 wrote the book on doing outlandish things for a Caribbean nation, specifically Jamaica at the winter games.
Alexander said the pilot from that very same team was also one of his mentors.
His journey to the games hadn’t been smooth sailing. Alexander said Covid-19 had made training for the Olympics quite difficult.
“It’s been a slog and it’s really been jumping over hurdles that have been coming at me left, right and centre.
“This hyper accelerated process of going from zero to Olympian was made all the more harder by the pandemic."
However, he still managed to get there, achieving all the required milestones in order to qualify for the games only 35 days prior.
“It was such an honour to be on the field as some of the best athletes in the world.”
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