Trent Roleau, Hero

I never thought my personal hero would be younger than me. But I've come to believe that Trent Roleau, 21, is either Addison County's incarnation of Achilles or a modern day Perseus. I'm not quite sure which.

Back in the day he led the Mount Abe basketball team to a state championship. More recently, I profiled him as part of my Making a Life in Addison County series, and he told me about his plans to start a small-scale diversified farm in Lincoln. Intrepid stuff.

For the print edition of the paper, I also wrote about his family's life on their Lincoln homestead, and their involvement in draft horse competitions around New England. It turns out that a few years ago, Trent acted as a more conventional hero — and possibly saved lives — at a draft horse competition in Maine.

During a competition, four horses got spooked and bolted through a fence. As they were heading towards an open gate leading into the fair grounds, Trent ran the horses down, and corralled them by pulling on the lead horse's bridle. In the words of the fair director, Roy Andrews:

Trent saved the day. His quick thinking and decisive actions prevented what could have been a terrible situation. These horses had already shown that fences weren’t going to stop them.

If you don't believe Andrews, watch for yourself:

For the record, the Freyburg fair (where this took place) gave consent for us to post this video, which is illegal to reproduce without consent. This was a rare accident; the Freyburg fair and draft horse competitions around New England have excellent safety records and no one was seriously injured in this event.

Oh, and Trent also won the two horse team class at this fair. William Wallace has nothing on this guy.