ELDORA, Colo. — If this keeps up Sydney Staples will have the Most Improved award in the bag for the end of the season. Staples for the second straight day picked up a fifth place finish, this in the giant slalom, one slot behind teammate Mateja Robnik, helping the Lobos to finish fourth at the Spencer James Nelson Memorial University of Colorado Invitational. The two top-10s on the women’s side paced UNM, while Sean Horner rebounded from a horrific day in the Slalom on Sunday with a sixth-place showing in the GS on Monday.
Overall, host Colorado won the event with a four-day score of 668. Utah was second with 631 and Denver was third 585.5 points. Behind New Mexico at 476 was Alaska Anchorage with 436, Montana State with 408 and Westminster with 192.5. The top seven places in the standings were identical to the opening RMISA meet of the season, the University of Utah Invitational two weeks ago. UNM will look to change that order in a few days at the Jade Enterprises/UNM Invitational in Red River, N.M.
Staples was by far the story for New Mexico, with a second straight fifth-place finish, and she was the only skier to finish in the top five in both the slalom and giant slalom in Colorado. Staples entered the meet with only one top five in her career, and that was in a GS qualifier last year. She will go for three in a row with tomorrow’s GS qualifier.
Joining her in the top-5 was Mateja Robnik, who was only 0.96 out of the lead. For Robnik, it was a fourth top-10 finish in five races this season, and a third top-5. UNM’s other scorer in the giant slalom was Courtney Altringer, who was 15th. Sara Ottesson was close behind in 17th. Taylor Grauer recorded a DNF in the opening leg, and after the flip Karoline Søvik Myklebust did the same. Myklebust, much like last season, has finished no lower than 12th this season in the races that she finishes, but she has DNF’ed three times, twice in the GS.
On the men’s side, it was a plus to see Horner return to his old self. The veteran and two-time All-American last year was 13th after the first leg of the GS but came down with the sixth-best time of the second run. That was good enough for sixth overall. Overall the men’s GS was hotly contested as Horner was just 0.07 out of a podium finish.
While Horner did well, the men’s alpine squad struggled for a second straight day. Carl-Johan Öster was UNM’s next-best finisher at 15th, and that was on the strength of the eighth-best run after the flip. He had been sitting in 22nd. Juho-Pekka Penttinen was UNM’s other scorer in 20th place, and Mark Miller was 23rd.
UNM’s women’s alpine squad combined for 151 points, second-best in the meet behind Utah’s 164 points. UNM’s issue really was the Nordic team, which was brutally shorthanded and missing three key figures from last year’s NCAA run, including the women’s free skate national champion (Eva Sever Rus) and the reigning U.S. Open champion (Aku Nikander). Two other Nordics that missed the Colorado Invitational in Jessica Gnüchtel and Anni Nord are expected back for this weekend’s races, but Sever Rus and Nikander are doubtful.
UNM is the defending champion of their own meet, and last year’s win was the first for the team since winning the Jade in 2011.
Remaining Schedule of Events
RMISA GS Qualifier
Tuesday, Jan. 27:
Men’s Giant Slalom (LaBelle/International; 8:15 a.m. first run, 12:30 p.m. second run)
Women’s Giant Slalom (LaBelle/International; 10 a.m. first run, 2:15 p.m. second run)
SCORING: For the second season, the RMISA has the same scoring system utilized by the NCAA. Each school can designate six potential scoring skiers with the top three counting toward the team score. Points are awarded as follows for a maximum of 30 skiers: 40-37-34-31-29-27-25-23-22-21-20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Any finisher from a school that has already scored three skiers do not receive team point credit, with the next placement assigned to the next finisher from a school who has not yet utilized all three scoring spots.
Notes: Robnik has now scored in all four races this season … New Mexico never took over fourth place in the meet until the seventh event out of eight … Emilie Cedervärn has UNM’s only podium finish of the season (in the classical race), but UNM does have six top-5 finishes.