Denver Leads, Colorado Closes Gap After Women's GS

Tuesday, January 5, 2016 • by Curtis Snyder, RMISA

PARK CITY, Utah—The Denver Pioneers held onto their lead despite more than half their team being sidelined by illness, which did allow the Colorado Buffaloes to close the gap Tuesday with the running of the women’s giant slalom at Park City Mountain Resort. Denver, which held a 37 point lead after Monday’s slalom races, now lead by 14 points over Colorado.

Just two of the Pioneers’ five women’s skiers started the race, and it would’ve been worse for the Pioneers, but the two skiers that did race, Tuva Norbye (fourth) and Monica Huebner (eighth), both finished in the top eight to garner 54 points for the Pioneers.

The Buffs won the race with 77 points on the strength of a second place finish from Tonje Trulsrud while Jessica Honkonen took ninth and Nora Christensen 13th for the Buffaloes. CU held off host Utah, which scored 75 points and had the race winner, Chloe Fausa.

Fausa’s time of 2:04.90 was almost a second faster than the rest of the field, with Trulsrud’s time of 2:05.85 being another two-thirds faster than third place Marie Aufrere (2:06.52). Behind those three and Norbye, Montana State’s Stephane Gartner rounded out the top five in a time of 2:07.08.

Denver now has 240 points through three of eight races in the meet, ahead of Colorado’s total of 226. Montana State moved into third place with 72 points off the strength of Gartner and her teammate, Benedicte Lyche, who finished sixth.

The Bobcats total of 191 points is just two ahead of the host Utes (189) while Westminster moved down to fifth place with 181 points. New Mexico is sixth with 165 points, Alaska Anchorage seventh with 135 and Colorado Mountain College rounds out the team scoring with 42 points.

The alpine portion of the Utah Invitational will conclude on Wednesday with the men’s giant slalom before heading north to Montana for the MSU Invitational next weekend. While they travel to Montana, the Nordic teams will close out the Utah Invitational at Soldier Hollow before they themselves travel to MSU the following week to close out the first third of the season.