CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Jamaican sprinter Tyquendo Tracey reckons Lewis Hamilton would make a good Olympic bobsleigh driver should the seven-times Formula One champion be looking for thrills once he hangs up his helmet.
Tracey is carving out his own parallel sporting career at the Milano Cortina Games with the Jamaican four-man bobsleigh team, whose history dates back to the 1988 "Cool Runnings" crew -- the heroes of one of Hamilton's favourite movies.
At 41 Hamilton could not be as quick as sled pusher Tracey, twice a national track champion and sub-10-second 100 metres runner who can claim to be the fastest natural athlete at the Games, but steering might play more to the Ferrari driver's strengths.
"I think he (Hamilton) would do well," F1 fan Tracey told Reuters Television.
"When you see people like Lewis Hamilton going around curves (at) 200-250 miles an hour, he's going to have the eye for it to be able to manouvre a sled ... so, personally, I think he would do very well."
An Olympic four-man bob can reach around 150 kilometres per hour.
Hamilton, whose paternal grandparents came to Britain from the Caribbean island of Grenada, has spoken often of the influence of 'Cool Runnings' in showing Black athletes breaking into a White-dominated sport -- a story similar to his own start in motorsport.
More recently, Hamilton has also expressed an interest in bobsleigh.
"If I was to do a Winter Olympic sport, it would be bobsledding," he said in a recent Ferrari team video reflecting on his team's home Games. "I always wanted to do bobsledding.
"There's no Grenadian team, so maybe I would take my best friend Jan and then get a couple of other characters from Grenada and then create a bobsleigh team."
Tracey said Hamilton, the most successful driver in Formula One history and first Black champion, was a role model.
"I watched the new Formula One movie that Lewis produced. And so, after doing that, I started paying more attention to Formula One," he added.
"That's my guy. He's my people in a sense. So he's automatically a role model for a lot of people just because of where he's from, you know, who he is."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Additional reporting by Ilze Filk and Marta Fiori; Editing by Ken Ferris)
