More Solid Marks as UNM Finishes Fourth
Red River, N.M./Crested Butte, Colo. — It was another day of solid marks as UNM picked up seven top 10 marks on the day with four on the alpine slopes and three in Nordic as UNM finished fourth at the UNM/Drew Judycki Memorial/Jade Enterprises Invitational. UNM finished just 10.5 points behind Utah for third place as UNM easily had its best showing of the season.
The Lobos didn’t break the 400-point barrier in either of the first two meets, at Montana State and at Utah. UNM has moved up one spot in each meet, finishing sixth at the Montana State Invitational and fifth at Utah. Now, UNM has a fourth-place finish to its credit.
The Nordic events were once again conducted in Crested Butte, Colorado and were over before the first run of the women’s alpine was completed. The 5K classical race saw a pair of Lobos pick up top 10s, with Erland Nydal finishing fifth in just his second collegiate race. Nydal, who scored 29 points, was complimented by Sindre Tungesvik, who picked up his second straight top 10 finish, coming in ninth. Tungesvik scored 22 points. UNM’s other Nordic finisher was Niklas Rombock, who was 18th, scoring 16 points. Overall, UNM finished fourth in the men’s race, scoring 67 points, the most points in a classic race this season.
The women’s team also scored its highest women’s classical point total, scoring 55 on the day to come in fifth in the race. Hannah Varjus, competing in her first invitational for UNM, picked up a ninth-place finish for 23 points. UNM’s other racers all finished within five places of each other. Brenna Egan continued her breakout season with a 17th place finish, scoring 17 points. The 17 points were a career-best for Egan.
Behind Egan in 19th was Andrea Klementová, who scored 15, and Carolyn Lucca was 21st.
In Red River, it was once again a great day for the men’s alpine squad, who just missed a fourth race win this season, finished just one point behind Denver 89-88. The Lobos were actually shut out of the podium, but still recorded three top 10s as Vegard Busengdal, Youri Mougel and Rob Greig finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively. The same triumvirate scored in Saturday’s slalom.
Busengdal just missed his 12th career podium, coming in fourth by just 0.12 seconds. Busengdal scored 31 points, Busengdal ran his streak of 30+ point races to six this season with the fourth-place finish. Mougel, who finished seventh yesterday in what was a career-best race, topped it with a stellar pair of runs to come in fifth place, scoring 29. Rob Greig, who had a career-best sixth-place finish yesterday, tied that with another sixth-place finish for 27 points.
On the women’s side, it was Rebecca Feigl once again. The newcomer finished fifth for the second straight race, and the fourth time in the last six as she recorded her sixth straight top 10. She scored 29 points for UNM, as the Lobos would total 54 to come in fifth in the race. Alexandra Sjöström was 18th, scoring 14 points, and Haley Cutler bounced back from a big crash yesterday to finish 21st, scoring 11. Katharine Irwin rounded out UNM’s alpine team in 23rd.
The Lobos will look to continue it’s hot racing next weekend at the three-day Denver Invitational. The alpine team will race the giant slalom on Friday at Loveland Ski Area before taking a day off and then finishing with the slalom on Sunday. The Nordic team will head to Maloit Park Trails for the freestyle race on Saturday and then the classic race on Sunday.
NOTES: Busengdal took over the RMISA slalom points lead with his fourth place finish, coupled with Colorado’s Ola Buer Johansen’s DNF in the second run today … UNM’s 251 Nordic points were more than UNM scored in the first two races of the season combined, which was 237 … Feigl has now finished fifth three times in four slalom races this season … UNM’s Nordic team picked up five top 10s on the weekend after only getting six top 20 finishes in the first three Nordic weekends of the season.