Internet Heaps $187K on Broke Jamaican Bobsledders

Team is crowdfunding its Sochi trip
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 21, 2014 8:19 AM CST

If you're a fan of Cool Runnings, consider this: You can help send this year's Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympics. The team qualified for the games for the first time since 2002, but needs to raise tens of thousands of dollars to actually travel to Sochi. Fortunately, the Internet exists, meaning the trip is getting crowdfunded:

  • A Crowdtilt campaign has raised more than $113,000 so far.
  • An Indiegogo campaign has raised nearly $40,000 so far.
  • And in perhaps the weirdest development, the person who runs the Dogecoin Foundation has launched a fundraising effort using the Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency Dogecoin. The "Dogesled" campaign has raised nearly $34,000 so far.

"As someone who grew up in the '90s, Cool Runnings was the ultimate feel-good movie about underdogs out of their element achieving their dreams," the fundraiser organizer explains to the Guardian. "When I was about 7 years old, my best friend and I had a billy-cart that his dad built. When we would start our run down his driveway, we would shout out the catchphrase from the movie: 'Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it's bobsled time!'" In other bobsled news, US track star Lolo Jones is headed for Sochi as part of the American squad. (More 2014 Sochi Olympics stories.)

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