Benjamin Alexander (skier)
Benjamin Alexander (born 8 May 1983) is a British former DJ and the first alpine skier to represent Jamaica in the Olympics. Early life. Benjamin Alexander was born in Wellingborough, England to a Jamaican father and British mother in 1983. Having won a government scholarship, he was educated at Wellingborough School, an independent school in Northamptonshire. At the age of 17, Alexander began DJing. He began studying physics at Imperial College, London before transferring to University College London to study electrical engineering , graduating in 2006. After university he worked in wealth management in Hong Kong. DJ career . In 2010, Alexander quit finance to pursue DJing professionally. He spent a decade touring in 30 different countries—eventually performing at Burning Man starting in 2011. By 2015, he was hosting a radio show as well as a weekly party in Ibiza, Spain while co-founding the award-winning music festival, Further Future. Alexander retired from DJing in 2018 but kept his board seat with the charity Robot Heart, a well-known Burning Man camp. Skiing career. In 2016, Alexander was invited to DJ a ski trip in Whistler, British Columbia where he had his first mountain lesson. Alexander began  pursuing skiing professionally at the end of 2019 after attending the 2018 Winter Olympics as a spectator, noticing only three Jamaican athletes representing his father's nation. His father had emigrated to the United Kingdom as part of the Windrush generation. Knowing he wouldn't qualify for the British Olympic team, he applied for a Jamaican passport (which he qualified for through his father): the Olympic standard is lower for countries that don't normally qualify for the games. Alexander's first official race was on 9 January 2020 and he qualified for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on 13  January 2022. In preparation of the 2022 games, Alexander maintained weekly mentorship calls with Dudley Stokes, the former Jamaican Olympic bobsledder, since the beginning of 2020. Alexander raced the giant slalom event on 13 February 2022, finishing in 46th place (last), but ahead of 43 other athletes who did not finish in the event.