{"id":25859,"date":"2026-02-14T23:04:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T23:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/joel-fearon-from-pizza-delivery-man-to-winter-olympic-hopeful\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T23:04:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T23:04:57","slug":"joel-fearon-from-pizza-delivery-man-to-winter-olympic-hopeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/joel-fearon-from-pizza-delivery-man-to-winter-olympic-hopeful\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Fearon: From pizza delivery man to Winter Olympic hopeful"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Like many athletes, Fearon’s career has been affected by agonising injuries at key moments.<\/p>\n

He has wires in his lower leg bones holding them together, following a serious one picked up while running for the British relay team. <\/p>\n

“After that, I semi-retired from athletics, I still went and did a few things, but it wasn’t the same,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It took a good two-year chunk out of my athletic career.”<\/p>\n

But while that pain eased over time as he recovered, what hit his family next was hard to put into words.<\/p>\n

In 2023, his sister Natasha Morais was murdered.<\/p>\n

Feeling scared and suffering with insomnia,<\/a> Fearon retired from all sport.<\/p>\n

“It was tough for all of us. We are all still dealing with it in our own ways,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to do sport again. I really struggled with anxiety.<\/p>\n

“I was becoming afraid to leave my family alone.”<\/p>\n

Coming out of retirement to represent Jamaica has given Fearon fresh focus and brought joy to a grieving family.<\/p>\n

But he did not necessarily expect to be pushing a sled at another Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

“It was an athlete and coach role, I can do all the jobs across bobsleigh, even just organisational jobs,” said Fearon, who met rapper Snoop Dogg while training in Italy.<\/p>\n

“But we ended up getting in the sled. I’ve done six races and won six races, so I’m a pretty good lucky charm.<\/p>\n

“I think they’re going to have me pushing a few more times before I’m done,” he joked.<\/p>\n

Fearon’s father is Jamaican, while his maternal grandparents are also from the Caribbean island.<\/p>\n

“My dad was so proud. I’ve never seen him excited about sport before,” he added.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t even know these guys a year ago and they’re all like my brothers, I get more excited about them racing than I do myself racing.<\/p>\n

“I’m probably taking on a dad role. Seeing how much they’re excelling, it’s just really exciting for me to watch and wonder where it could go.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many athletes, Fearon’s career has been affected by agonising injuries at key moments. He has wires in his lower leg bones holding them together, following a serious one picked up while running for the British relay team. “After that, I semi-retired from athletics, I still went and did a few things, but it wasn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25861,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25859\/revisions\/25861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}