Lobo Men Win MSU Giant Slalom, Women Third
Montana State Invitational Giant Slalom Results | Meet Notes
BOZEMAN, Mont. — Head coach Joe Downing might need to take the gang to the Pickle Barrel. The men’s alpine squad nipped the competition to win the men’s giant slalom, and the women’s team finished third as the Lobos sit in second place through the first two events of the MSU Invitational.
The competition gets a one-day break before the slalom events on Friday. Thursday is still alpine time as the Lobos will compete again in the giant slalom, this time in the second of two RMISA giant slalom qualifiers. The qualifiers have no team scoring component, but the results are used to gain qualification points to NCAAs in March.
The win for the men marked the second straight year that UNM has won the giant slalom at Bridger Bowl, doing so last year with 79 points. This year’s race proved extremely tight with four teams finishing within four points of each other.
It did not look like UNM would be close to winning after the opening run that saw just one skier, Vegard Busengdal, in the top 10, and he was 10th. Several other Lobos were bubbling below in the high teens, but much like the women did earlier in the day, the second run was fortuitous for the Lobos.
Tyler Theis was first out after sitting in 21st after his initial run, and he blazed through the course with what ended up as the seventh-best second run. That moved him eventually all the way into 12th, which was good for a key 19 points.
Alex Barounous was next out for UNM after opening in 17th place, and he was able to move up to 14th. While he did not score for UNM, the 14th place finish was his career-best mark for a giant slalom competition, besting a 17th place finish in 2017. Barounos’ placing didn’t score points because of the runs turned in by Olav Sanderberg and Busengdal.
Sanderberg was able to turn in a solid second run and shuffle himself all the way to seventh place for his first career top-10 finish, scoring 25 points. Busengdal was then up, looking to move up from 10th, and he blitzed the track, coming down in 48.07, the second-best run of the heat. It put him temporarily in first place with nine skiers to go, and only three were able to top his combined time. That put him fourth, just missing what would have been a 13th career podium. Instead he scored 31 points, clinching the win.
UNM’s Nick Veth and Thomas Anderson were outside the top 30 after the first run, and while Anderson recorded a DNF in the second, Veth, seemingly skiing out the race on his own, nearly caught the group. His second run vaulted him from 32nd all the way to 20th, which marked his career-best giant slalom finish.
The women’s course proved a bit tricky on the second run, as 10 of the top 30 first run skiers went out in the second, including a pair of Lobos. However, it opened the way for UNM to get a pair of top 10 marks.
The women’s giant slalom saw a pair of career-best finishes, led by Soňa Moravčíková, who finished fifth, topping her previous best finish of sixth. It marked her third top-10 finish in four collegiate races, and she picked up a career-high 29 points for UNM.
Coming in second for UNM and eighth overall was Rebecca Fiegl, scoring 25 points. It was Fiegl’s 13th top-10 in just her second season, and like Moravčíková, it was her third top-10 of the season. With a pair of good scores in, UNM needed one more to finish with a good team total, and newcomer Chloe Margue turned in her best effort of the season. Twenty-second after the opening run, Margue bolted all the way up to 11th for her best finish of her young career, scoring 21 points.
Margue’s run with the 12th best of the second run, but it paled in comparison to Fiegl, who was fourth, or Moravčíková, who was second by just 0.02 seconds.
UNM’s other finish was Haley Cutler, who had to take a restart, and that movement to later in the round hurt her, as she finished 17th overall. Katharine Irwin and Antonia Wearmouth, who were ninth and 10th respectively after the opening run, were two of the 10 skiers in the top 30 to not get through the second run.
NOTES: Both teams topped their previous meet giant slalom point totals … the Lobo men’s alpine team won both a giant slalom last year (MSU Invitational) and a slalom race (Utah Invitational) … the track was tricky as 40% of the female skiers didn’t record a finish, while 38.3% of the men didn’t record a finish.