Utah Invitational Updated Standings & Men’s Giant Slalom Results
SNOWBASIN, Utah — In Norwegian the name “Vegard” means “protection”. In New Mexican it means “dude who skis downhill really fast”. In his fourth collegiate meet, Vegard Busengdal picked up a fourth straight top-10 finish, coming in sixth place in the men’s giant slalom at the University of Utah Invitational.
The placing, and the accompanying 27 points, helped keep the Lobos in fourth place at the meet with 369 points. They are 70 points behind third place Denver, and 44 ahead of Montana State. The Montana State Invitational concludes on Saturday with the men’s and women’s slaloms.
Busengdal, now has a finished tenth, eighth, fifth and sixth this season in his four races, with his best finish of fifth actually in the slalom, which has only been run once. His four top-10s now easily lead the team. He actually was tied for third after the first run, but the course slowed considerably on the second run, bring the pack back towards the leaders, and his second run was just 18th best, dropping him to sixth.
The beneficiary of the second run was Rob Greig. The 2016 All-American caught a major break when he finished just ahead of Alaska-Anchorage’s Conor McDonald to finish 30th in the opening run, allowing him to go first in the second run. That was a key as Greig destroyed the course, posting the fastest second-go time to move all the way into 18th, giving him a top-20 finish and 16 points to UNM. Patrick Brachner finished 22nd and picked up 13 points. Isak Klein and Tyler Theis finished 31st and 34th to round out UNM’s finishing group. Alex Barounos and Nick Veth failed to finish.
The Lobos will look to keep pace with everyone on Saturday in the slalom, and event that both the men and women finished fourth in last week in Montana. On Sunday, the teams will run the slalom again for the second RMISA qualifier.
Results will be available on live-timing.com, and twitter.com/UNMSkiing will have updated results. In addition, the Nordic squads will begin the second half of the Montana State Invitational at Bohart Ranch on Saturday with the 5K (women’s) and 10K (men’s) freestyle races as Krista Niiranen goes for a third straight podium. The women’s will go at 10 and the men at 11 a.m. Live results can be found at http://raceresults.sportstats.us/events.xhtml?eventname=2017%20MSU%20Invitational&companies=%5b9. The 15K/20K Classicals will be run on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. for the women and 10:45 for the men.