On this special episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella provides an update on stories she covered on season two of the podcast including the Olympic Jamaican bobsled team.
Olympic Jamaican Bobsled Team
Sunday Feb. 20 marked the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics which saw nations gather to compete in sport.
Team Jamaica competed in the 2022 Winter Games; it qualified for the four-man bobsled and two other bobsled events in Beijing.
READ MORE: Jamaica’s 4-man bobsled team makes Olympics for 1st time in over 20 years
The last time the four-man bobsled team qualified was at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan.
Olympian Nimroy Turgott said his goal for the 2022 games was to build on the success of previous teams and beat Jamaica’s personal best in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway when the team placed 14th overall.
However, Jamaica’s bobsled team didn’t have the finish they hoped for, placing 28th overall.
“I wasn’t satisfied with the performance because I think we could do much better than what we did,” Turgott said.
Yet he noted it was the first time the team had seen that track in Beijing. They team had about six training runs before the competition, he added.
“It’s basically like six minutes out of training before actually racing in the Olympics on that track, and we didn’t have the best equipment.”
Turgott said the team plans on building their skills and abilities.
“I am not disappointed in the overall performance of the season because we came together as a team on the 18th of September … and we actually put in the work and qualified for the Olympics,” he said.
READ MORE: What happened to… the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team
“We’re fully focused. We spoke about it, that we want to stick together as a crew going forward into the next Olympics,” he said. “Imagine if we were together for like four or five years together, training together and doing the exact same thing with the same goal? Together, we can achieve more.”
Asian Giant Hornets
Season two of What happened to…? launched in November with the first episode looking back at the first Asian Giant Hornet nest discovered in North America in B.C.
And while no Asian Giant Hornet nests have been found on Vancouver Island or the Fraser Valley since September 2019, in August and September last year, three nests were located in Washington state.
Officials with the Washington State Department of Agriculture have been monitoring the insects and have not detected any activity since the nests were eradicated last year.
“Since that time, we have not detected any additional Asian giant hornets or hornet nests,” said Karla Salp, the public engagement specialist at the department.
“So we didn’t have any more sightings or detections in traps after that last nest removal on our side of the border.”
READ MORE: What happened to… Murder hornets?
Salp said that following the eradication of the nests in September 2021, one insect was located in B.C.
“The Canadian authorities did actually pick up one Asian giant hornet across the border from where we were eradicating those nests east of Blaine. But they believe it was connected with our nests. So the timing was such that it looked like it was very likely that it came from one of ours and just didn’t obey international borders,” she said.
While there have been no detections of Asian Giant Hornets, officials from Washington State said three years would need to pass before the insects will be considered fully eradicated.
“We have to have three years in a row, basically, without a detection and then at that point, we consider it eradicated, although likely we’ll still continue to monitor some degree,” she said.
WATCH: ‘What Happened To’ is back for season 2
“It was encouraging that after we removed that third nest last year, we didn’t have any other detections or reports. So that was good news, but only time will tell.”
Contact:
Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca
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