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More Northwest Athletes Qualify For Sochi Olympics

It's not just the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl that will make for an exciting February for Northwest sports fans. The Winter Olympics start just days later, and more Northwest athletes have punched their tickets to the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

A first-place performance at the final Olympic qualifying event secured a spot on Team USA for snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington of Sun Valley, Idaho. Team announcers called the 24-year-old Farrington up to the stage at Mammoth Mountain, California four years after she narrowly missed the cut for the Vancouver Olympics.

Meanwhile, in a different half-pipe final in Park City, Utah, pro skier Angeli VanLaanan of Bellingham landed atop the podium. VanLaanan overcame Lyme disease and a three-year hiatus for treatment to qualify for Sochi. 

The very latest skier to officially learn she's Sochi-bound is slalom and giant-slalom racer Jasmine Campbell. This Whitman College student who hails from Sun Valley is not with Team USA, however. She'll carry the flag of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where she was born.

"I just about jumped out of my skin with excitement," wrote Campbell in an email after she got word of her selection. She will be the only athlete representing the tropical U.S. territory at the Sochi Games. Campbell's family moved to Idaho from the Caribbean when she was 9 years old.

Correspondent Tom Banse is an Olympia-based reporter with more than three decades of experience covering Washington and Oregon state government, public policy, business and breaking news stories. Most of his career was spent with public radio's Northwest News Network, but now in semi-retirement his work is appearing on other outlets.