CLOQUET — Many people celebrate the Fourth of July with a cookout, time with family and friends and a few fireworks in the evening. Matt Welch and his brother Ben did much of that, but it’s what came beforehand that raised some eyebrows last week. Matt, a former cross-country state champion at Proctor who also qualified for the Olympic marathon trials in 2020 and 2024, now lives in Bellingham, Washington, but he came back to Duluth to visit family.
After running cross country and track at the University of Minnesota from 2013-16, Matt, 29, became a social worker, but he still runs competitively and is hoping to become one of less than 1,800 people to ever run a 4-minute mile in the next year. Previously, he’s been less than 3 seconds off of joining one of running’s most exclusive clubs and Ben, a professional ballroom dancer, decided his brother’s training wouldn’t take during an Independence Day visit to Duluth. Ben, who regularly trains for triathlons, took his brother on a 2,000-meter swim in Island Lake and a number of other strenuous activities during Matt’s weeklong visit.
ADVERTISEMENT “We tried to beat Matt up, we tried to get him tired,” Ben said. What’s more, the brothers are extremely competitive with each other, even going so far as to create a public Facebook page — Welch vs. Welch — to highlight some of their competitions.
Sometimes it’s a push-up contest or other relatively mundane game, others are epic in scope. A little over 10 years.
