Denver Takes Early Lead At Utah Invitational

Monday, January 4, 2016 • by Curtis Snyder, RMISA

PARK CITY, Utah—The Denver Pioneers got the 2016 season off to a solid start, having both individual winners and getting a win on the women’s side and second place on the men’s side here at the Utah Invitational to take a 37 point lead on the field after two of eight races are complete in the season’s first meet.

The Pioneers scored 186 points and lead defending NCAA Champion Colorado (149) by 37 points. Associate member Westminster College is third, just behind the Buffaloes with 147 points. Montana State sits in fourth place with 119 points, five ahead of host Utah (114) with New Mexico (104) also scoring over 100 points. Alaska Anchorage is in seventh with 87 points and Colorado Mountain College scored 19 points.

The men started the 2016 season off and Denver’s Erik Read immediately make his mark on the season by winning the first run in a time of 58.30, holding more than a half-second lead on the first, a gap that he maintained in the second run to win by 52-hundredths of a second over Colorado’s Ola Johansen.

Read won his second collegiate race in just his fifth collegiate outing. Last season in four races, he hit the podium three times and was seventh in the other race. He has now won both a slalom and giant slalom race.

Johansen was himself four-tenths of a second ahead of third place Giulio Bosca from Westminster, who’s two run time of 1:57.78 was a third of a second ahead of his teammate, Tim Lindgren (1:58.11). Montana State’s Garret Driller rounded out the top five in a time of 1:58.62.

DU racked up 85 points on the strength of Read’s performance combined with two other top 10s as Sebastian Brigovic took eighth and Taylor Shiffrin was ninth. But it was Westminster who edged the Pioneers with 90 points. The Griffins Jonas Nyberg took seventh to accompany Bosca and Lindgren’s top five finishes.

In women’s slalom action, it was a familiar name atop the list at DU senior Kristine Haugen won the slalom race by almost seven-tenths of a second over the field. Haugen didn’t ski away from the field in either the first or second run, but she was the only skier in the field to put together two top finishes. In the first run, she topped Utah’s Julie Mohagn by six-hundredths of a second. Mohagen ended up second with a two-run time of 1:34.41. In the second run, Haugen was tied with CU’s Tonje Trulsrud and MSU’s Kari Hole for the fastest time.

Trulsrud used that time to move into fourth place in a time of 1:35.53, behind Pioneer newcomer Tuva Norbye, who hit the podium in third in a time of 1:35.37. New Mexico’s Karoline Mykelbust rounded out the top five in a time of 1:35.68.

The DU women were the first team in 2016 to surpass the 100-point mark, racking up 101 points, 30 more than second place CU while New Mexico was one point behind the Buffs with 70 points.

Action continues Tuesday with the women’s giant slalom races and then the alpine portion of the Utah Invitational concludes Wednesday with men’s giant slalom races. The Utah meet concludes next week with Nordic action while the Montana State Invitational will get underway at Big Sky.