PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — They are united here, at the Winter Games, at the bottom ranks of a sport considered among the most dangerous and daring, flopping belly first on a heavy sled and rocketing headfirst down a twisting and swirling ice track at 80 miles an hour.

It’s called skeleton, not because of what may break, but because of the bony appearance of the sled (or from a corruption of a Norwegian word for sled, “kjaelke”). Some call it plain crazy.

The two skeleton athletes here from Jamaica and Ghana, two countries where there is very little natural ice, if any, were apprehensive, too, at first, neither of them knowing much about the sport before giving it a shot.

Anthony Watson, 28, a sometime actor from New Jersey representing Jamaica through his father’s lineage, recalled lying on the sled a few years ago as a training coach lifted his legs before that first run down, way down.