Born to a Jamaican father and an English mother, Benjamin Alexander (38) will become the first athlete from Beijing to wear Jamaican colors during an alpine skiing event at the Winter Olympics. An anointing transitioned to high finance for this former DJ and model who discovered skiing in 2015.

It’s hard not to see a good remake of Rasta Rocket. The ski version, this time. Like the first Jamaican bobsled team, whose epic 1988 Calgary Games inspired cinema, Benjamin Alexander will probably deserve his own film in a few years. At 38, he has just won a ticket to Beijing. In less than a month, he would become the first athlete to represent Jamaica in the alpine skiing event at the Winter Olympics. Consecration of an extraordinary course.

Born to a Jamaican father and an English mother, raised near Northampton (central England), he was never actually promised an Olympic fortune. He started skiing in 2015 while on a vacation in Canada. Clicked something.

Desert, Ibiza and High Finance

“I vividly remember the first time I went skiing without an instructor. I dropped 27 times in one go. But I thought to myself, well, this is just the beginning. If next time I’m off 27 times If I manage to fall lower, there will already be progress. And that’s what happened,” he told AFP in December. Skiing became a passion for him. As if he had found a new meaning in his life. A brilliant student, he first studied physics and then engineering at a prestigious university in London. Before breaking into separate fields as music and finance. His fame as a DJ has spread far beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. In just a few years, they have chained the biggest festivals. From the most popular beaches in Ibiza to the famous Burning Man in the Nevada desert.

She made her name in modeling itself. And then he got into higher finance, settling in Hong Kong. An area in which a person traveling to more than sixty countries still operates. For his latest challenge, which he actually took on after competing at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, he was able to convince sponsors to support him and his efforts didn’t count. The workaholic, who does not have a full-time coach, claims to have skied for more than 450 days in the past two years. It was still necessary to reach a level high enough to make room for the Games. He managed to do so on Wednesday during a competition in Liechtenstein, by checking the qualification criteria for Beijing, namely passing under the points limit set by the International Ski Federation, as reported by The Guardian.

“Crazy Things Can Happen”

“The International Olympic Committee wants to represent as many countries as possible in the Olympic Games. They allow each country to propose one female athlete and one male athlete in each discipline according to certain criteria. If you visit the International Ski Federation website Let’s go, you’ll see I’m the best Jamaican skier. It doesn’t make any sense. If you look at the rankings, I think I’m 3748th in the world in giant slalom. Am I better than the average skier? Am? Damn, am I better than an Austrian kid who’s been skiing since he was two, running since he was seven, and is now 14? No, that kid is probably a lot better than me,” he told Eurosport this month. Benjamin Alexander is forthright. He knows that he has no chance to compete with the world elite in alpine skiing. But it doesn’t matter to him.

“I came up with a crazy plan that sounded crazy to most people, but I thought it was completely possible. What was crazy was executing that plan under the pressure of the pandemic. It was a crazy one.” Dream come true. My goal is to attend the opening ceremony, have a good time and show other Jamaicans, other minorities, other people who haven’t started skiing at the age of two, crazy things can happen and dreams can come true ,” he told Eurosport. Seven years after hitting his first green run, Benjamin Alexander is poised to become the 15th athlete to compete for Jamaica at the Winter Olympics.