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Intro:
Former MadNorSki Junior Ben
Cline and Madisonian is now a freshman at Northern Michigan
University. Since this year & next he will still be under 20 years old, he
is still considered a "junior". He is in his first year of the two year age
group know as "Older Juniors". Therefore, he can
compete at "Junior Olympics" (our country's junior nationals) both this year and
next.
Ben is competing all this week at 2003
Junior Olympics in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Today's (Monday's) event was the sprint. It was
about 900 meters long and took Ben's cohorts about 2:00 to complete.If you
recall, last year Ben was 1st in his J1 age group and 4th overall out of all the
juniors.
Today Ben was the 2nd Older Junior
(O.J.) and 2nd Overall to Leif Zimmerman of
Montana by a mere 0.3 seconds in Ben's third and final heat!
Wow!
Only one other Midwest (WI & MN) team
skier did as well today. That was Lindsay Weir of Minnesota - last year's
high school-aged Olympian who won O.J. gold today
This comes on the heels of his 13th
place in the Sprints at Senior Nationals in early
January in Rumford, Maine.
At that event he was racing against skiers 10 and
15 years his senior! In fact, he had the thrill of racing a heat with
Olympian Carl Swenson. He lost (this time).
Three Cheers Ben !!!
Good Luck the rest of the week in your 15km
freestyle race Wednesday, your 10 km classical race Friday and your 3 by 5km
relay Saturday.
You can follow the action at
I am told races can be seen in real time via web
cam. How?
Ski ya,
Don Fariss (Ben's old, yet very proud
coach)
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