Red Lodge Man Wins Ski-Joring

The Gazette reports that Tyler Smedsrud’s lightning-fast finishes in the top bracket at Montana’s oldest ski-joring competition earned him the first-place trophy on Sunday.

Unfortunately, he was lying in an ambulance next to the track. The 35-year-old Red Lodge native– one of several skiers in the annual National Finals Ski-Joring competition– suffered a serious wipe-out at the Red Lodge Fairgrounds. In his last run last in the elite “Open” bracket, he went hurtling off the third ramp, a 50-foot rope in his hands attached to a horse pulling him at upwards of 30 mph, when he lost control and crashed violently.

He ended up with a vertical fracture to his tibia, and possible injury to his knee and ACL tendon.