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West wins bronze medal at national championship

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Contributed by: Cynthia Moore-West on 8/8/2008

McKenzie West 16 years old from Sedalia, Colorado won the bronze medal at the 2008 US National Championships and the North American Championships on June 28th in New Mexico in the diverse and difficult Olympic sport of Modern Pentathlon.

The sport is shooting (air-pistol target), epee fencing (one touch bout with every competitor), swimming (200 meter freestyle), running (3,000 meter cross-country run) and equestrian jumping (show jumping a horse over 4ft course of 12 to 14 obstacles) which is all done in one day. This gave her a opportunity to represent the USA at the European Championships in Dublin, Ireland July 6th as a individual and also on the team relay.

Kenzie is from a family of a long line of equestrians.She began riding at the age of 3 with her mother Cindy who has been competing horses for over 30 years. Kenzie started competing in 3-day eventing through the youth organization of United States Pony Club. In 2006 with her horse partner Grieko, they won second in the nation for Novice Level of USEA. After the devastating death of her beloved horse Grieko, she wanted to keep riding but knew it would be very hard start over and expensive to find his replacement.

She found the sport of Modern Pentathlon by chance 3 years ago when she was too young for 3-day eventing at the USPC nationals and the only other riding option was Tetrathlon (all disciplines minus the fencing). In 2007 she won the bronze medal at the USPC nationals in Tet. and that gave her a jump start into Modern Pentathlon. Then the Olympic Training Center contact her mother Cindy to help coach the MP atheletes and supply horses for the riding of the national championships. Kenzie watched all of this and said I can do this and wanted to give the crazy sport a try.

Currently she is a junior at Castle View High School and is on the cross-country, swimming and track team to help keep her training and skills up. Her weakness is the fencing and shooting, which she will be utitlizing the great coaches at the Olympic Training Center this year to help improve her scores.

With alot of hard work and determination Kenzie has her sights on the new Youth Olympics in 2010 in Europe and 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Cynthia Moore-West

Sedalia , CO

Cynthia Moore-West has posted 1 story and 0 comments since joining on 8/7/2008. Cynthia Moore-West's average story rating is 0.

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