• The Green Going for Gold: Three Alumni and One Student Athlete Qualify for Beijing Olympics

    Thursday, July 17, 2008
    News Type

Three Dartmouth alumni and one Dartmouth student will be among the athletes competing in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing in August. Dominic Seiterle '98,  Adam Nelson '97, Jarrod Shoemaker '04, and Craig Henderson '09 have made their respective teams to participate.

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Seiterle, from Montreal, won gold in the World Rowing Championship with the Canadian squad in 2007 and has qualified for the 2008 Canadian Heavyweight 8 team. Seiterle returned to rowing last year after a seven-year lay-off following the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, where he raced in the Canadian double, finishing 13th. In the summer of 1997, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, but he recovered to return to Dartmouth and captain the heavyweight crew team in his senior year.

Shoemaker, from Sudbury, MA, earned the first spot on the U.S. men's track team with an 11th-place finish in the triathlon at the ITU BG Beijing World Cup. This 2005 under-23 world champion has extensive experience in international competition, having won the 2006 Haul to the Great Wall Series, and was the 2004 USAT under-23 national champion.

Nelson, a shotputter from Atlanta, has competed  for the United Sates in two previous Olympic Games. In the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he earned a silver medal. Going into the games, Nelson was the favorite to win, having won every major event in the summer of 2000. His throw of 21.21 m (69 ft 7 in) was just three inches short of winning the gold. Nelson's personal best is 22.51 (73 ft 10 in), which he threw in 2002. At that time, this was the ninth farthest throw in history. He defended his silver medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Soccer player Henderson, from Wellington, New Zealand, competed on his native country's under-23 national team at the Oceania Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Lautoka, Fiji, in March, and helped New Zealand go 5–0 to seal its first Olympic bid.

Daniel Keat '10, also from Wellington, was a member of the New Zealand under-23 national team, but was injured in April and will not compete at Beijing.

Sean Furey '04 (Methuen, MA), Mustafa Abdul-Rahim '04 (Brookline, MA), and Ben True '08 (North Yarmouth, ME) all attempted to qualify for the U.S. men's track team, but their bids fell short. Tyler Koskenoja '07 narrowly missed qualifying with Team Canada in the decathlon, and Harry Norton '08 (North Reading, MA) fell short of qualifying for the British team when he competed in the 1500m at the British Trials on July 12.