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YELLOWSTONE, Mont. — The 2017 collegiate ski season doesn’t start until January, and a lack of bad weather in Albuquerque put the UNM Nordic squad at a little bit of a disadvantage, but the team spent a week in Yellowstone, getting onto the snow and getting a few raced in as the Nordic squad opened up its preseason with a partial squad and several races.
“It was a little bit tough for us since we had only skied for one day before the competition while the rest of the field had been here skiing for an entire week,” said head coach Fredrik Landstedt. The opening weekend began with regular freestyle and classic races, and despite the lack of training on snow, UNM performed well.
UNM’s only skier in the women’s freestyle race was Brenna Egan, who finished 30th overall in the large mix of professional and collegians. She was 1:33.9 off the lead pace, but she was 11th among all collegiate racers.
UNM sent four skiers each way in the classical race, and saw more solid results. On the men’s side newcomer Arnaud Guyon was the top finisher for the Lobos, coming in 16th overall and seventh collegiate. Veteran Aljaž Praznik was next for UNM, coming in 22nd overall and 11th collegiate. Niklas Rombock, who last season went from an emergency substitute at the NCAAs to nearly an All-American, was 34th overall and 14th collegiate. Rounding out UNM’s men’s contingent was Kyle Beling, who was 53rd overall and 16th collegiate, giving UNM four in the top 16 collegiately, a solid early sign.
On the women’s side, newcomer Krista Niiranen from Finland was 13th overall and sixth collegiate, just 35.9 seconds off the lead pace. Kati Roivas, who finished second at the NCAA Championships last year in the classical, was 30th overall and 12th collegiate with teammate Julia Devaux back and healthy and right behind her at 33rd and 13th. Another newcomer Julie Ensrud was 39th overall and 15th collegiate. The women’s overall field was huge with 78 competitors, giving UNM four finishes in the top half.
The following weekend saw UNM’s Petteri Vaherkoski debut for the season in a great test race for the season, the USSA Super Tour Sprints. Sprints will be a part of the 2017 collegiate season this year after a near 30-year absence.
Thirty skiers qualified out of the 81-skier field in the sprints, with Vaherkoski and Guyon coming in 14th and 26th, earning quarterfinal slots, with Praznik’s 36th place finish just missing out.
In the quarterfinals, the top two finishers in each of the five sprints advance to the semifinals along with the next two fastest times as wild cards. Vaherkoski was knocked out in the second of five quarterfinal races, but Guyon earned the first wildcard despite a third-place finish in race three. That sent him into the semifinals, where he didn’t advance but finished as the top collegiate skier on the men’s side.
For the women, only Niiranen and Devaux raced, with Devaux qualifying 25th and Niiranen ninth. Devaux couldn’t escape the quarterfinals, but Niiranen continued her solid start with earning the first wildcard in quarterfinal race number four. She didn’t advance to the finals, but finished as the No.2 collegiate skier in the race.
“It was a good day for us in the FIS Super Tour Sprints in West Yellowstone,” said Landstedt. “We only raced three men and two women since this was in the end of a very tough training week. “Utah, Colorado, Montana State and ourselves competed as well as other college teams and pretty much all of the professional Nordic teams in the country as well as the U.S. Ski Team. It was a great race for us.”
