Online Crowdfunding Efforts Will Successfully Send The Jamaican Bobsled Team To The Olympics

REUTERS/Peter AndrewsLascelles Oneil Brown (left) and Winston Alexander Watt of the Jamaica-1 team at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Looks like the Jamaican bobsled team will make it to the Winter Olympics in Sochi after all, thanks to crowdfunding support on the Internet.

When news broke on Sunday that the Jamaican team had qualified for the Olympics for the first time in over 10 years, team member Winston Watt set up a PayPal account to raise at least $40,000 to help pay for travel expenses. Soon, the online crowdfunding began in earnest.

One of the buzziest campaigns was the $30,000 raised through Dogecoin, the meme-based digital currency that started as a joke in late 2013.

However, the largest fundraising effort has been through CrowdTilt, where people have contributed more than $125,000 so far, sky-rocketing past the team's $80,000 goal.

This several-day saga could make an interesting, Digital Age followup to the 1993 film "Cool Runnings," based on the Jamaican bobsled team's Olympics journey in 1988.