Mica Moore is on an Odyssean journey to the Winter Olympics. A British sprinter turned Jamaican bobsleigh pilot, her wild career has had more twists and turns than the whizzing Whistler track she’s just bombed down.
And there’s no rest for this wicked talent. As we chat, she’s flying down the motorway on a 16-hour mission to Park City in Utah, before she prepares to hurtle herself once more towards Olympic qualification. There are journeys within journeys. And Mica has never sat still – except when cosy in her sleigh.
Her love for sport, as well as the loving support from her parents, has enabled her to make some brave, career-defining decisions. She traded her summer spikes for the winter snow in 2016 after a glandular-fever-type virus prevented her from competing as a top-level sprinter.
It was a crushing moment for a young athlete who had competed at the 2014 Commonwealth Games as a 21-year-old. But it was the virus that led to Mica catching the bobsleigh bug.
“We looked for a new challenge – something to keep me ticking over – and I had a friend in the bobsleigh team who said, “Why don’t you come give it a try?” It was one of those things, just doing it to see what happens. And it went really well.”
That is perhaps an understatement. Mica’s first attempt at bobsleigh was in Bath, where she underwent ‘Swiss Testing’: sprinting, jumping into the sand and pushing a bob on wheels. In her own genuinely modest words, “I got a score that was close to breaking records.”
No doubt records were broken. You can picture the Bath bobsledders, eyes wide open, whispering to one another. Word spreading. Have you seen this new talent? I’ve never seen anything like it. Like Neo in the Matrix dojo.
Mica was ‘The One’. Challenging herself in ways she’d never done before. “Nobody was saying ‘don’t do this’, but my own little devil on my shoulder was saying, ‘Oh my God, you’re crazy.’ I’m not the most thrill-seeking person. I don’t like rollercoasters; I’m scared of heights.” But heights are what she has been scaling.
“I went out to Calgary six weeks later and it just became a whirlwind. If I’d had time to think about it, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But because it all happened so quickly, I was just along for the ride.”
She went on to compete for Great Britain in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, achieving Team GB’s best ever result in the women’s bobsleigh with an eighth-placed finish. Not bad for a 100m sprinter. So how does she compare the two?
“Bobsleigh is not for the faint-hearted. It’s long days in the cold for 60 seconds on the track. You’re at the track for five hours, moving the sled, lifting it, polishing runners. You’re not just pushing or driving; you’re your own mechanic.
In athletics you can be a little more glamorous, turn up with your spikes and go. Both are tough, but bobsleigh probably tops it.”
Her success is even more inspiring when you learn that this has been a self-funded process. The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association withdrew her funding less than a year before the 2018 Games, instead prioritising the men’s team. The glass – or shall we say ice – ceiling, has not yet been shattered.
“Our ambition was top ten. After day one we were sixth, and to finish eighth, the best British women’s finish ever, was amazing. It inspired so many women into the British team, including quite a few Welsh women.”
Mica doesn’t dwell on the unjust nature of the funding double standards, even if it was a contributing factor in her short-lived decision to return to athletics in 2019.
You can sense, however, that despite all her astonishing achievements, she takes the greatest pride in holding the torch for young British women hoping to make it in professional sports. After all, it was her parents who inspired her growing up. Her father has been her coach since she was six, and her mother was her idol.
Nobody was saying ‘don’t do this’, but my own little devil on my shoulder was saying, ‘Oh my God, you’re crazy.’
“She didn’t have much when she was younger, but growing up she looked like Superwoman to me, the biceps, the strength. As a young girl, that made me feel like I could be strong. They’ve both supported me my whole life and I couldn’t do it without them.”
She returned to bobsleigh in 2021, but her second stint in the British team was wrought with challenges, sadly related to both her gender and skin colour. Something needs to change, and something certainly needed to change for Mica.
Rather than flip-flopping back to sprinting, she took a decision of the heart, a decision to connect with her roots, her identity. She decided to plough on as a bobsledder, but under a new flag.
Although she will now of course continue to inspire young British women, it will be Jamaican women who now have a chance to be captivated by her talent. In December 2024, Mica became a Jamaican citizen through her mother’s side of the family.
A month later, she was now a Jamaican bobsledder. She had finally found a sporting environment where she felt comfortable and connected.
“After my last summer with the British team I was still ranked number one pilot and brake woman, but I felt there was an opportunity elsewhere. Unfortunately, Great Britain has some skeletons in their closet; it’s not always the nicest team to be part of. Jamaica welcomed me so kindly. Representing my heritage was a really proud moment.”
There is some serendipity in a young, mixed-race woman growing up on Disney movies (“I’m a massive Disney fan. I had a yellow TV in my room”) and dreaming of becoming a professional athlete, going on to represent Jamaica in the bobsleigh.
Six-year-old Mica would never have known that her life would imitate art, but Cool Runnings II is surely coming to your screens this February.
Mica is now well on her way to competing in the black, green and gold at the 2026 Milan Olympic Games. She embraces the cliché movie reference. Of course, she isn’t the first Jamaican to compete at the Winter Olympics, and there is a danger of tokenising her achievements through a Disney lens.
But there is something special about such a beautiful film catalysing the Jamaican involvement in the Winter Olympics, whether it’s Mica or any other talented, young hopeful.
A lot of young athletes can’t see the wood for the trees. They get injured, have a bad race, and want to quit.
“It’s such a feel-good, inspiring movie. It’s nice to be part of that heritage, and I hope we can add a new chapter to that story, especially with everything going on in Jamaica with the storms. Some happy news would be lovely.
And the results this week have been record-breaking [at Whistler, in the North American Cup]. Three podiums out of four races for me, and the boys got a gold in the four-man. It’s an amazing start to the Olympic season. We’ll know (if we make it) around 17 January.”
Will this be the last leg of her epic career, switching both sports and national allegiances?
“The reality is, it’s a financial thing. I’m (still) a self-funded team. No financial support from the federation. I’ve been incredibly grateful this year: people and businesses have helped with helmets, suits, kit, coats, even someone buying me a van to drive around Europe, and a sponsor getting me a new two-man sled.
None of this would be possible without them. But every year the sport gets more expensive. I’d love to do it for ever, but it’s more of a pocket issue than a heart issue.”
For Mica, that may well be the case. But for her legions of fans, her success is very much a matter of the heart. An inspiring trailblazer, paving the way for young women to wrestle agency in their careers. There will be hundreds, if not thousands of young women looking up to Mica as they begin their journeys into professional sports.
Her advice is typically optimistic: “A lot of young athletes can’t see the wood for the trees. They get injured, have a bad race, and want to quit. I always say, ‘Don’t give up. Keep smiling. Keep enjoying it.’
The reason I’ve been in sport so long is because I love it. The community, the friends, the experiences. A bad day doesn’t make you a bad athlete. One of my favourite quotes is: ‘Even when times are good, they’ll pass, but even when times are bad, they’ll pass too.’”
Mica is finding joy in the whole journey, not just the destination. So should we. Her dream is to achieve a higher finish for Jamaica than she managed in 2018 for the Great Britain team.
And when all is said and done, and she’s put the sleigh away, would she ever try her hand at a third sport? “I think tennis would be fun. I play a little bit.”
Wimbledon next? Doubtful. But you wouldn’t bet against Mica inspiring the next generation of women to either pick up a racket, drive a sleigh or sprint for glory. And you certainly wouldn’t bet against her making the headlines for Jamaica this February. Coming to a yellow TV near you.
That last bit is why I continued writing and educating novice punters this season. It just didn’t sit right with me that a lot of the products I helped pioneer had been turned into these monstrous profit-extraction machines.
So by educating people from the lens of a professional, maybe I could help even the playing field just a bit, and make new friends along the way.
The lesson: even in the age of better data, machine learning and AI, smart punters can still win by combining sports knowledge with models to stay ahead of the game, and as someone who has been working with all of these elements for decades, I doubt that’s going to change any time soon.
Mica Moore represents Jamaica in bobsleigh and is a former 60m sprint champion for Wales.
