RED RIVER, N.M. — Vegard Busengdal’s 15th career podium, coming on a second-place finish, led a trio of Lobos in the top seven of the men’s slalom, but somehow, they were outdone. UNM’s women’s alpine team, which is very strong in the giant slalom and hadn’t finished better than fifth in the slalom, got a podium from Soňa Moravčíková and UNM jumped up and shocked everyone by winning the women’s slalom, pacing UNM on day one of The University of New Mexico/Drew Judycki Memorial/Jade Enterprises Invitational.
The slalom races took place at Red River Ski Area on the Downtown Trail, while the 7.5k Nordic Classic races were held at The Enchanted Forest Ski Area.
Overall, the Lobos are in fourth place in an amazingly close Invitational so far. Colorado has the lead with 302 points, ahead of Utah which is in second with 280.5. Montana State is in third at 274, New Mexico in fourth at 268, and Denver in fifth at 261.
Nordic races were the first to finish on the day, and the Nordic squads did enough to stay in the hunt, despite no podium finishes for the men’s team, the first time this year that’s happened. The women’s team got UNM off on the right foot so to speak, as all four races recorded season-best classical finishes. Julie Spets led the way in 14th, and she was followed by Savanna Fassio in 15th and Dariya Kuznetsova in 17th. Spets scored 18 points, Fassio 17 and Kuznetsova 15. Brenna Egan picked up a top-20 finish as well, coming in on the number in 20th.
UNM’s women finished sixth with 50 points, but they were just six points from third as everyone was close. That sent the men to the giant inflatable Lobo head which marked the start gate. Unlike last week with Kornelius Grøv and Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier finished 1-2 in both races, both missed podiums. Grøv with ninth and Izquierdo-Bernier was 10th, running their consecutive top-10 streaks to five each. Together they totaled 43 points, and Ben Berend’s first career points rounded out UNM’s scoring, as the Lobos picked up 53 points for a sixth-place finish.
Action moved from The Enchanted Forest to the Downtown Trail for the second runs of men’s and women’s slalom. With the men going first, the team sat with just Vegard Busengdal among the top 13. The Lobos would need big second runs, and oh boy did they get them.
They got them across the board in fact.
Tyler Theis, who was 23rd after his opening run, blitzed the field with a sparkling 43.15 run that held up as the best of the second run. That shuttled him all the way to 14th overall, and fortuitously for UNM, 14th was not in UNM’s top three. That’s because Alex Barounos was at it again. The senior set a career-best finish for a fifth straight race. He was in 19th after the first, but his 43.20 was just behind Theis, and he was catapulted all the way into seventh place, his second top-10 of his career, scoring a career-high 25 points.
Olav Sanderberg moved from 12th to sixth with a good second run, and all of that nearly overshadowed Vegard Busengdal, who finished second and picked up his 15th podium of his three-year career. Sanderberg scored 27 and Busengdal 37 as UNM finished second to Denver in the men’s slalom with 89 points.
Finishing second didn’t seem likely for the women’s alpine squad in the slalom. In two previous slalom races, the Lobos finished fifth and sixth, getting 51 and 46 points in those two races. Saturday on their home track, the Lobo women picked up their first win of the season, and UNM’s fourth event win of the season.
They did it with two skiers in the top seven and the first career points from an unlikely source. The two in the top seven were two of the likely suspects in Soňa Moravčíková, who earned her first career podium with a third-place finish, and Rebecca Fiegl, who finished seventh. For Moravčíková, it was a blazing second run of 46.73, the best among all skiers, that set up her third-place finish. That earned Moravčíková 34 points and Fiegl 25. The other points came from Antonio Wearmouth, her first career score. Wearmouth, who scored 17 with a 15th place finish, picked up a fifth-place finish in the opening giant slalom qualifier. Since then, Wearmouth had struggled, posting four DNFs. On this day however, she slayed the proverbial dragon with the seventh-best run to finish 15th and give UNM enough for the win.
The second half of the UNM Invitational begins at 9 a.m. with the women’s 5K at The Enchanted Forest. The men’s race will be at 10 a.m. Both Nordic races will be team interval starts. The alpine slalom races will begin with the men at 9 a.m. and the women at 9:45 a.m. with second runs at 11:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
NOTES: Barounos scored 25 points, giving him 66 on the year, besting his previous season-best of 61 during his sophomore season (2016-17) … Busengdal climbed to 805 career points, and he now has 26 top-10 finishes … Theis’ 14th-place finish was his best slalom finish of the season … With Wearmouth scoring, all six Lobo women’s alpine skiers have scored this season … Kuznetsova recorded her first career top-20 finish.