Vital Signs
THIS ICEMAN COMPETETH
Dartmouth otolaryngologist Dudley Weider, M.D., got his first taste of the Northeast when he competed at Lake Placid in speed-skating championships as "a high school kid" in the mid-1950s. He liked the region so much that he headed east from Ohio to go to college at Dartmouth, where he tried to combine competitive skating with academics. Ranked among the top 10 speed-skaters in the U.S., he recalls during his first year at Dartmouth hitchhiking to Saranac Lake to compete.
"Then," he says wryly, "I decided I'd better study."
His studies took Weider to medical school at Tufts, but in 1974 he returned to Dartmouth as a member of the DMS faculty.
Then, several years ago, Weider took up speedskating again—and once again achieved a national ranking. In recent years, he has placed second or third at the U.S. Marathon Speed-Skating Championships at both the 25-kilometer and 50-kilometer distances (that's about 15 and 30 miles, respectively) in the 60-and-over age group.
And as of press time for this issue, he was sharpening his blades for the 2004 national championships, scheduled for mid- January on nearby Lake Morey in Fairlee, Vt.