Montana State Invitational Standings & Nordic Freestyle | Utah Invitational Standings & Slalom
HUNTSVILLE, Utah & BOHART RANCH, Mont. — The University of New Mexico Lobos finished fourth as the Utah Invitational was completed today with the men’s and women’s slaloms, with Vegard Busengdal once again posting a top-10 finish, coming in second for his first career collegiate podium finish. It gave Busengdal five consecutive top-10 finishes to open his Lobo career.
While the alpine squads finished up in Utah, the Nordic squads raced in the 5K women’s and 10K men’s freestyle, and Krista Niiranen once again registered a podium finish, coming in third place to led the women’s team, while Arnuad Guyon and Petteri Vaherkoski finished sixth and ninth respectively. The Lobos climbed to fifth place and are just 34.5 points behind Montana State for fourth place with the 15K and 20K Nordic classical races tomorrow.
Busengdal’s first podium came after a brilliant opening run that saw him second. He actually was passed momentarily for third by Montana State’s Garrett Driller, but he was DQ’ed moving Busengdal up to second and securing 37 points for UNM. Alex Barounos had a career-best 12th place finish for his fourth top-20 on the season (after none last year), scoring a career-high 20 points. Patrick Brachner was 17th for 15 points as the men’s alpine team scored 72 to finish third in the race. Tyler Theis had his first top 20 of the season in 19th. Rob Greig, who was eighth after the first run, and Isak Klein, who was 13th, both didn’t finish their second runs, and Nick Veth was originally 20th, but was disqualified for missing gate 46.
On the women’s alpine side there were no top-10s, although all five alpiners completed both runs. Karoline Søvik Myklebust led the way with a 12th place finish and 19 points, with Katharine Irwin and Sydney Staples finishing 18th and 19th for 15 and 14 points each. Overall UNM scored 48 to finish sixth in the race. Alexandra Sjöström was 21st and Taylor Grauer was 23rd.
The Lobos picked up two top-10s in the men’s 10K freestyle race with Arnaud Guyon in sixth and Petteri Vaherkoski in ninth. It’s Vaherkoski’s second top-10 of the season, and Guyon scored 27 and Vaherkoski 22. Aljaž Prazink was 13th and scored 18 points and UNM finished third in the race with 67 points. Niklas Rombock didn’t score but finished 20th overall.
On the women’s side, Niiranen did it again, with a third straight podium finish, coming in third after finishing first and second last week. She scored 34 points, just two seconds out of second place. Kati Roivas was 16th (scoring 15 points), and Eva Sever Rus was 24th (scoring 10). UNM’s women finished third as well.
Brenna Egan was 26th and Julia Devaux was 32nd.
Tomorrow the alpine squads will compete in a second RMISA slalom qualifier, which will count towards NCAA qualification, but there will be no team scores.