Buffs Come in Third in Freestyle Sprints

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The University of Colorado Nordic teams both placed third in Tuesday's freestyle sprints held at Kincaid Park as a part of the Seawolf Invitational.

The women's team placed third with 66 points and had two top 10 finishers while the men's squad also placed third, scoring 65 points with two Buffs inside the top 10.

"Sprinting isn't something that we focus that much on, we don't spend a lot of time training for it because it is not part of our normal repertoire," head Nordic coach Bruce Cranmer said. "All being said it was an okay kind of beginning to the second half of the season.

"Some people feel a little like they haven't raced in a while and it sometimes takes a little adjustment coming to sea level because sometimes you don't have quite the speed that you think you need. Most of us are in the same game with that, so it is not like some school has a real advantage other than Anchorage from the stand point that they do ski here all the time. Sea level requires a little higher speed and tempo to get used to."

Senior Jesse Knori recorded his second straight and third overall top 10 finish of the season, as she placed sixth Tuesday. Sophomore Christina Rolandsen followed in ninth place and senior Lucy Newman finished 16th, her best finish of the season.

"For Jesse, I think that was good especially having done a bunch of racing at the U23 World Championships (in Utah last week)," Cranmer said. "Christina had a little bad luck, somebody put a pole between her legs and she went down and fell. She could have theoretically been better than where she ended up, but that's part of sprinting a little bit. You don't have much time to recover from that."

The women's team was without juniors Petra Hyncicova and Ane Johnsen, who between the two have six podium finishes in eight races this year. Johnsen was out due to illness and Hyncicova because of injury. Neither will race in Wednesday's mixed gender relay.

Sophomore Petter Reistad came in sixth to lead the men's team. He has now finished sixth or higher in all five races this season.

"Petter had a good race and I think our top finishers did alright, some of the boys I was hoping they would be a bit higher up," Cranmer said.

Making his first appearance in 2017, senior Mads Stroem came in ninth place for the Buffs. Stroem had his appendix removed during the opening week of the season, but recovered quickly and the three-time NCAA Champion continues to work himself back towards his elite level.

"I think Mads is coming back, I would not say he is at 100 percent by any stretch having been out for a while," Cranmer said. "I think he had a good race being he had surgery a few weeks ago and hasn't trained that much. Certainly going hard in the sprint type format is tough, so I thought he did fine."

The third scorer for the men's team was junior Ian Boucher, who came in 23rd.

Now through six events in the Seawolf Invitational – the alpine races were held back in Jan. 25 and 27 – CU sits in fourth place overall for the meet with 405 points.

Utah holds the team lead with 510 points, a 76-point advantage of Denver sitting in second place with 434 points. Montana State is in third with 421 points.

Up next, the Buffs conclude the Seawolf Invitational Wednesday with the running of the mixed gender relay where you only score two teams. It is the first time in nearly 30 years that a mixed gender relay is taking place, and is being held at the Girdwood Nordic Race Trails.

"I'm hoping that we end up winning the relay, we're going to try and have a winning team," Cranmer said. "You could mix it around and go 'oh maybe we'll have two balanced teams,' but I think we are just going to try and put our strongest team forward.

"I think the course is pretty hard, pretty technical. We haven't seen it at all so we really won't go ski it until the morning. That will be somewhat interesting to see how that goes… It will be fun. I think we are all looking forward to it since we haven't done a relay, I can't remember the last time we did a relay, so that will be interesting and fun to see."

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Players Mentioned

Ian Boucher

Petra Hyncicova

Ane Johnsen

Jesse Knori

Lucy Newman

Petter Reistad

Christina Rolandsen

Mads Stroem