Benjamin Alexander: Former DJ Remixing the Spirit of Cool Runnings | Ski

A strategic approach and fearless technique have led the engineering graduate and former DJ to not only make sport history, but also find success as a black athlete in a historically white sport. He mentors Dudley ‘Tal’ Stokes, one of the men’s bobsleigh team whose journey from the Caribbean to the Alberta mountains became the subject of a hit Disney movie.

“Olympic Games Qualified Baby,” read the post on Alexander’s Instagram account less than seven years after he was first exposed to skiing on a trip to the Canadian resort of Whistler. Alexander says he saw those running down the slopes that day as “almost like superheroes putting on these skis and just disappearing,” but he took up the sport that winter and, after falling 27 times on his first descent, he never looked back.

Alexander is the son of a Jamaican father and an English mother. Raised in Wellingborough, outside Northampton, he had a working-class upbringing. “My mother, father and brother have spent most of their working careers in factories or driving,” he said. “None of the three finished high school with a decent GCSE or O-level.” However, Alexander was recognized as a gifted child and obtained a scholarship to a private school before studying first physics and then engineering at Imperial College. A parallel life as a DJ first in the UK and then internationally saw him win a residency at America’s Burning Man festival and he also worked in finance in Hong Kong.

Alexander, a motivational speaker, bills himself as a “reinvention expert” and has used skills learned in his other careers to further his quest for success in skiing. “I’ve been to 67 countries, I’ve spent a lot of my life traveling,” he told Olympics.com. “I’ve always loved traveling and a big part of my previous role as a DJ was promoting myself in the right way, figuring out ways to get into places, clubs and festivals I wanted to perform at. I never hired the services of a manager or agent as a DJ because I wanted to do it my way. “

He formed a support network that included Stokes and American skier Gordon Gray, who called Alexander’s technique “terrible” but noted that his lack of fear would give him an advantage in the competition. He devoted himself entirely to his sport, setting his sights on Austria, but building a strategy to enter the Jamaica Olympic team after a visit to recent games in Pyeongchang. He continued to use his analytical skills to figure out, from International Ski Federation data, what times he would have to hit if he ever qualified, with some routes to Olympic qualification venues left open for countries with no track record of success in sports. of winter. . “I’ve gotten totally nerdy with that database,” he said.

Alexander will become the 15th athlete to compete for Jamaica in the Winter Olympics. First up was the 1988 bobsleigh team that qualified, fell out of competition, finished last, and made history. “You’re going to have to have the determination to suffer and fight, but have pride and power,” is Stokes’s advice to the former UK Garage DJ. “That is the attitude you will need.”