Denver Extends Lead As Alpine Complete At Montana State

Monday, January 11, 2016 • by Curtis Snyder, RMISA

BIG SKY, Mont.—Denver entered the day with just a two point lead over Colorado but extended that lead to 33 points at the conclusion of the alpine portion of the meet with men’s and women’s slalom races taking place Monday here at Big Sky Resort. The Pioneers also walked away with two more individual race wins.

Colorado actually took a two point lead at the conclusion of the men’s alpine race, outscoring the Pioneers by four, 79-75. Host Montana State won the men’s alpine race with 81 points while Westminster (74) and Utah (68) also in the mix as just 13 points separated those five teams.

But in the women’s race, the Pioneers dominated with Tuva Norbye winning, Kristine Haugen second and Monica Huebner fifth to rack up 106 points, the most in the young RMISA season for any discipline. Colorado was second in the race with 71 points, but some 35 points back as the Pioneers took their lead back plus some for the 33 point cushion entering next week’s Nordic races.

Norbye had the fastest first run and held on for the win with the third fastest second run for a total time of 1:48.86, almost six-tenths ahead of Haugen’s time of 1:49.45. Alaska Anchorage’s Maria Gudmundsdottir started the race in 32nd but crushed her first run with the third fastest time and held that spot in the second run, coming in at 1:49.95, a half-second behind Haugen.

Colorado’s Jessica Honkonen was 15th after the first run, but won the second run by over six-tenths of a second to move all the way up to fourth place in 1:50.30. Hueber’s fifth-place time was 1:50.74.

Behind Denver (106) and Colorado (71), the remaining five teams scored between 49-59 points in the race with Utah’s 59 good enough for third place.

In the men’s race earlier, DU’s Erik Read won his fourth race out of five this season, coming in with a two-run time of 1:43.00. Westminster’s Giulio Bosca was second in 1:43.69 with Montana State’s David Neuhauser taking third in 1:44.13. CU’s Henrik Gunnarsson was fourth in 1:44.29 and Utah’s Joergen Brath took fifth in 1:44.41.

Much like Honkonen on the women’s side, CU’s Ola Johansen and MSU’s Morten Bakke both used stellar second runs to push for a podium spot. Johansen was 21st after the first run and had the fastest second run by just three-hundredths over Bakke, who was 22nd. They both surged up 14 spots to finish seventh and eighth, respectively.

The alpine teams will now have a week off prior to the Spencer James Nelson Memorial Invitational, hosted by Colorado in Steamboat Springs Jan. 22-24. Hosted at the same site as the NCAA Championships in March, alpine teams will have a night slalom race on Friday, Jan. 22, and then a pair of GS races on Jan. 23-24 at Mt. Werner.

That will be the first meet where alpine and Nordic are competing together. While the alpine teams began the Montana State meet, the Nordic teams put a wrap on the Utah Invitational. The Utes used a dramatic final race comeback to secure the meet win. Nordic teams will race next week at Montana State before heading to Steamboat the following week.