Montana State Invitational Final Standings & Nordic Classical | Utah RMISA Slalom Qualifier
HUNTSVILLE, Utah & BOHART RANCH, Mont. — Krista Niiranen finished second in the 15K Classical for her fourth consecutive podium on a brutal day in Montana for Nordic skiing, and her race was just enough, combined with the men’s race to edge Montana State for fourth place in the Montana State Invitational.
In Utah, the alpine squad competed in the second RMISA qualifier of the season, this the slalom, with Vegard Busengdal again finishing second for his sixth straight top-10 finish and second straight podium.
The big story was the women’s race. Normally, you might see in a usual RMISA field of 44 just one DNF. Not 10, but 10 there were as the race was tough on all. Well, not for Niiranen, who finished second to Colorado’s Petra Hyncicova by 18.4 seconds. Aside from Niiranen, the only other Lobo to even finish the race was Brenna Egan, who scored 10 points with a 29th place finish. Those 10, along with Niiranen’s 37, were all UNM got in the event as Kati Roivas, Julie Ensrud, Eva Sever Rus and Julia Devaux didn’t finish. Overall, UNM finished sixth with 47 points, gaining four on MSU.
That left it to the men’s race, and the Lobos got a great set of performances to score 59 points. Petteri Vaherkoski was eighth, scoring 23 points, Aljaž Praznik was 11th for 20 points and Arnaud Guyon was 16th for 16 points. That gave UNM 440, meaning just needed to score 23 points.
That didn’t happen. Montana State got a 12th place finish from Noah Andersen for 19 points, meaning any finish by any other Bobcat skier would keep UNM in fifth. However, of the seven DNFs on the men’s side, two were Montana State’s Karsten Hokanson and Martin Muan, allowing UNM to eke out fourth place.
In Utah at the qualifier, the story was Busengdal, who now has six top-10s in six career races. He finished just .13 seconds out of first place behind David Ketterer of Colorado. Rob Greig turned in a career-best eighth place finish, and Patrick Brachner had a career-best tying 12th place finish. Alex Barounos picked up his fifth top-20 of the season with a 17th place showing as he has quickly turned into UNM most improved alpine skier on the men’s side this season. Tyler Theis finished off a nice weekend in 23rd place and Nick Veth was 29th. Isak Klein bobbled on the opening run.
For the women, Alexandra Sjöstrom, Sydney Staples and Katharine Irwin all finish clumped together, coming in 12th, 13th and 15th respectively. Karoline Søvik Myklebust was 23rd and Taylor Grauer didn’t finish.
There were no team scores kept for the qualifier.
The teams are off until heading to Alaska for the Alaska-Anchorage and Seawolf Invitationals at the end of the month.
NOTE: New Mexico now has six podium finishes this season after having just nine throughout all of 2016 … Niiranen’s four podiums equals Emilie Cedervärn’s entire 2016 total … Busengdal’s two podiums are the first for the men’s alpine squad since Juho-Pekka Penttinen finished 1st in the slalom at the Jade Enterprises/UNM Invitational in 2014.