Date of Birth:  July 8, 1983
	Place of Birth: Thunder Bay, ON
	Residence: Thunder Bay, ON
Years on National Team:  3	Height:  N/A
	Weight: N/A

Originally projected as a candidate for the 2010 Vancouver Games, Sean Crook's emergence over the past couple of seasons gave the national team no choice but to include him on the team headed to Turin in 2006.

As a youngster growing up in Thunder Bay, Crooks eventually shifted full-time to cross-country skiing after starting out in the Nordic combined. He made the decision to get serious about cross-country skiing after watching the 1998 Nagano Olympics.

After a successful one-year stint in the junior ranks, highlighted by an 11th place finish in the sprint at the 2003 World Junior Championships in Sweden, the Big Thunder Nordic Club member joined the senior national team.

For most of 2004 and 2005, Crooks has been competing on the Nor-Am Cup circuit. Over that time, he has accumulated 15 Top-10 finishes, including two wins, one of which came in his hometown of Thunder Bay in December of 2004.

Early in the 2005-06 season, Crooks, like many of his Olympic teammates, enjoyed some success on home snow. A ninth-place finish in a World Cup sprint relay in Canmore, AB, last December, coupled with a career-best 25th-place finish in a World Cup individual sprint in Vernon, BC, just days before, earned him his berth to Italy, where he'll get experience that should serve him well in Vancouver in four years.

In between training sessions and racing, the hard-charging Crooks still finds time to work on a correspondence undergrad science degree from the University of Waterloo, with an eye on a possible future in medicine.




2006 Xcountryskiing Coverage