A perfect storm of Internet has helped send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Olympics.
The Jamaica Olympic Association said on Monday that it would cover the group's travel costs, while a series of online fundraisers have put together the money for other elements like equipment and further training.
Crowdfunding, doge, Reddit and virtual currency have combined to raise approximately $93,000 in less than three days (at the time of writing) for the Olympics-bound underdogs.
[seealso slug="cool-runnings"]
The Jamaican bobsled team, which was immortalized in the 1993 Disney movie Cool Runnings, qualified for Sochi after a 12-year absence from the games. However, as recently as two days ago, the team was broke and needed $80,000 to compete. The team has no official funding and will need to pay for various costs including travel and equipment.
The Internet took notice, and money began to roll in.
Two crowdfunding platforms, Indiegogo and Crowdtilt, have raised $23,111 and $40,698, respectively. The Indiegogo page was officially set up by Team Jamaica, however Crowdtilt has also verified its campaign.
The bulk of donations thus far have come through efforts coordinated on Reddit.
In a post entitled "Let's send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics!" on the dogecoin subreddit, Redditors were encouraged to donate to the Jamaican team in the form of dogecoins. Dogecoin is a virtual currency, similar to Bitcoin, based on the Doge meme. Dogecoins are not nearly as valuable as Bitcoin, but recently became the most traded virtual currency.
While dogecoins are still quite cheap -- about 1 dogecoin trades for $0.0009547 -- the group was able to amass about $30,000. The dogecoins were converted into bitcoins, then exchanged for dollars, according to an update on the post.
The team officially qualified for the event on Saturday.
Here is the tweet from the official page of Sochi 2014 Winter Games with the announcement via @Sochi2014 pic.twitter.com/mzXW8Lh0rU— Team Jamaica (@JamaicaOlympics) January 18, 2014
And just in case you're feeling nostalgic, here's the theatrical trailer for Cool Runnings.