Jumping Ruins Skiers; Chaffee Takes Second

Jon Chaffee placed second in the cross-country at the Middlebury Carnival last weekend, as Harvard placed sixth overall. The Crimson made a very strong bid in the first three events, and went into the jumping in third place.

The jumping, the Crimson's traditional Achilles heel, was ruinous. The Crimson leapers fared even worse than usual on Middlebury's big fifty meter jump. Bob Livermore turned in the best Crimson performance coming in twenty-sixth.

In the long cross-country, Jon Chaffee was 1:30 behind first place Rikert of Williams. Harvard placed a high fourth in the event.

In the slalom, Steve Blodgett placed sixth, with a time of 131 seconds, fifteen seconds behind first place runner, Olympian Gordy Eaton of Middlebury. Ned Cabot was next for the Crimson, in seventeenth place. The course was a double run on a steep, bumpy trail.

In the downhill, Harvard placed a low seventh, but lost very little in points, and was not far out of third and fourth places. Steve Blodgett streaked to ninth place on a course that had a few hard bumps, but was generally easy. His time of 74.6 was only five seconds behind Eaton.

While the Crimson skiers were disappointed with their sixth place performance at Middlebury, they have high hopes for placing within the top five next weekend, thus qualifying them for the Nationals. At the Nationals the five best Eastern teams ski against the five best Western teams.

Demoralized by the big jump and a strong wind blowing up the hill this weekend, the Crimson leapers should turn in a better score on the smaller jump at St. Lawrence this weekend. As there are no mountains or ski jumps in Cambridge, the Crimson has less practice than the other teams this season. Nevertheless there has been steady improvement in all events except jumping. The team has succeeded remarkably well in its schizophrenic life of spending half of the week in Lamont and half in les Montagnes.