Our Own Olympian

Congratulations to our local olympic skier, Prawat Nagvajara, for entering and completing the 15-K cross-country sprint in the Torino Olympics.  There was a column with some nice words about Prawat in last Saturday's NYTimes.  The website is restricted, so I'll quote:

...a pure competitor...part of a band of brothers bound by their singular representation of countries without mountains or snow or even the season called winter...
Prawat, a computer-engineering professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, was inspired by [a Kenyan XC racer] eight years ago to lobby the Thai Olympic Committee to establish a federation to sponsor his participation at the Salt Lake City Games.  There, Nagvajara [did not qualify to complete the event] but he made it home yesterday, falling five times and breaking a pole...

We've all seen how fast and well Prawat skis, and can't imagine keeping this pace for 15K.  And we fall very, very often when pushing ourselves to our personal limits.  So our ski hats are off to you, Prawat, and we'll hope for a few recreational days at Crystal when it snows again and you are back from Italy.

Michael