Two high school runners from North Dakota were the picture of sportsmanship at a cross country meet earlier this month.
At the Oct. 11 EDC Cross Country Championship race in Glyndon, Minnesota, Fargo South's Danielle LeNoue was less than half a mile from the finish line when she injured her left knee, tearing her patella tendon and meniscus.
"It happened instantly," LeNoue told local CNN affiliate WDAY. "I was just running along and felt like a pop in my knee, and down I went."
Another runner, Devils Lake High School senior Melanie Bailey, stopped to help LeNoue. When LeNoue struggled to walk, Bailey bent down and carried her competitor on her back all the way to the finish line, then another 300 feet to where LeNoue could get medical attention.
“I feel like I was just doing the right thing," Bailey told the Devils Lake Journal.
LeNoue expressed her gratitude for Bailey's help.
“So nice," she told WDAY. "She didn’t have to do that. How many people ran past me? And she stopped.”
"It's just a race," Bailey explained on HuffPost Live, above. "That's the thing. A person is forever. A race just lasts 25 minutes."
Even though the two young women were strangers before the meet, they've since become friends, and have been messaging back and forth on Facebook. Neither won the race, but the display of human kindness won the day.
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