Dietze Wins, Buffs Extend Lead At Own Invitational

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo.—Saturday was Anna-Maria Dietze's turn. After finishing fourth, just one spot off the podium, on Friday, Dietze won the women's 5K freestyle race to help the Colorado Buffaloes Ski Team extend its lead here at the Spencer James Nelson Memorial CU Invitational.

Like Hanna Abrahamsson the day before, Dietze picked up her first collegiate victory for the Buffs, and with the help of Abrahamsson (second) and Weronika Kaleta (fourth), the Buffs trio bettered their performance of the day before, which is the best for any CU discipline since before the COVID-19 pandemic. And with Elena Grissom (11th) and Kili Lehmkuhl (14th) skiing well the Buffs finished with five of the top 14 finishers.

It was the best women's Nordic finish since a podium sweep in the 2019 New Mexico Invitational in the 7.5K classical race.

Magnus Boee paced the men's team in fourth place, just off the podium, and Oyvind Haugan had his best performance of the season on his birthday. Alexander Maurer was the third men's skier for the short-handed men's team in 14th place.

CU's men were without the services of Will Koch, who is skiing on the World Cup in Europe, Hugo Hinckfuss and Luka Riley, who are competing at the World Junior and U23 Championships in Canada, and Fredrik Nilsen, who is out sick for this meet. The women were also without Karolina Kaleta, who is also competed at the World U23s.

Despite being short-handed, the Buffs extended the lead in their own invitational and won the Nordic half in dominating fashion, picking up 360 points, 57 ahead of Utah and 84 up on Denver.

Action now turns to the alpine teams, who will compete at Eldora Mountain Resort next week to close out the CU Invitational.

WHAT IT MEANS

The Buffs nearly had a repeat of Friday's scores, just with a different order on the women's side, picking up three of the top four spots for the second straight day. No lead is safe in college skiing, but the alpine teams are in a good spot to content for a meet victory next week at Eldora.

ALPINE UPDATE

After significant snowfall at Bridger Bowl, the race organizers ran one run of the first women's GS and then determined it was unsafe to continue and cancelled the rest of that day and the next. The alpine portion of the MSU Invitational was cancelled and it was made into a Nordic only meet. That one run of women's GS does count as an official college race and will count for NCAA Qualification purposes. The plan is to run a men's GS race at Eldora on Wednesday ahead of the CU Invitational to even out the men's and women's race count. Race organizers in Alaska, who will host the UAA Invitational and RMISA Championships in late February, will attempt to put another set of GS races in place for qualification purposes. Any of the four of those races will be considered RMISA Alpine Qualifiers and not count toward any meet but will count for NCAA Qualification.

In that women's GS race in Bozeman, Emma Hammergaard finished on the podium in third place, Elena Exenberger took 13th, Kaitlyn Harsch 23rd and Cleo Braun 28th.

UP NEXT

Alpine teams will report to Eldora Mountain Resort Wednesday, Feb. 8, for an extra qualifier race. Then the teams will compete in the alpine portion of the Spencer James Nelson Memorial Invitational on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 9-10. The Denver Invitational is next up with Nordic races at Maloit Park in Minturn on Feb. 10-11 and slalom races at Loveland on Feb. 11-12.

WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS

The following are the results from the Buffs at the World Junior Championships

Hinckfuss competed in the Classic Sprints on Jan. 28 and finished 10th in the qualifier race and 26th overall, being knocked out in the quarterfinals.
Karolina Kaleta finished 35th in the U23 women's classic sprint qualifier on Jan. 29.
Luca Riley finished 34th in the 20K Classic race on Jan. 30, Hinckfuss took part but did not finish the race.
Karolina Kaleta finished 39th in the U23 20K Classic race on Jan. 31.
Karolina Kaleta finished 44th in the 10K freestyle race on Feb. 3.
Riley helped the United States finish seventh in the 4x5K Mixed Relay on Saturday. Hinckfuss and the Australian team took 13th.

KOCH UPDATE

Will Koch has been participating on the World Cup, being selected by Team USA to do so while he was in Lake Placid competing at World University Games. Koch took part in the freestyle sprints and team sprints at Livingo, Italy, Jan. 21-22, then traveled to Les Rousses, France, where he took part in the classic sprints and the 10K freestyle race. He also took part in the freestyle sprint races at Toblach, Italy on Friday.

TEAM NOTES

The Buffs scored 181 points and lead the meet by 57 over Utah (303) and Denver (276).
All teams scored eerily similar in races from Friday to Saturday. The Buffs scored 179 points on Friday and 181 on Sunday. Utah scored 152 and followed it up with 151, Montana State scored exactly 122 points on both days and Alaska Fairbanks scored 118 and then 113. Denver scored slightly less, 144 then 132, and Alaska Anchorage slightly more, 72 then 102.
CU's women's team went over the 100-point mark for the second straight race and with 108 points, scored the most points for CU under the current scoring system put in place in 105. The last two races are two of the three 100-point races by the Buffs in this scoring system across all genders and disciplines, which also includes a 106-point effort by the men's classic team in 2015 at the Utah Invitational.
Prior to this weekend, the highest point total for women's Nordic in this scoring system was 88 in a women's freestyle race in the 2015 CU Invitational.
The Nordic team's 360 points is the most in a meet since the 2019 New Mexico Invitational, when they scored 366 points.
The 360 points on the Nordic side is tied for the fifth-most under the current scoring system.

WOMEN'S NORDIC NOTES

Dietze picked up her first collegiate win in her 34th finished race in her career. It's the second podium of her career and first since the 2020 Utah Invitational. She has 33 top 20, 18 top 10 and eight top five finishes in her career.
Abrahamsson finished second for her fifth career podium and she now has 11 top five and has finished all 15 of her career races in the top seven.
Kaleta just missed a second straight podium in fourth place. She now has six top five finishes, three in 2023, and 15 top 10 finishes in 22 career races.
Grissom finished 11th for a new career best, topping her spot in Friday's classic race by one spot. She has now finished in the top 20 in four of her first five college races.
Lehmkuhl placed 14th, matching her career best, which she obtained on this same course last year in the 15K freestyle race at the RMISA Championships.

MEN'S NORDIC NOTES

Boee finished fourth, just off the podium, and racked up his 31st career top five and 36th career top 10 finish in 39 career races.
- His 31st career top five finish places him eighth in CU history, fifth for men's skiers and third for men's Nordic skiers. Only Rune Oedegaard (39) and Mads Stroem (33) are ahead of him on that chart for men's Nordic.
- His 36th career top 10 finish ties him for 12th place in CU history, tied for eighth for men's skiers and tied for fourth in men's Nordic history. He's tied with Stroem, and behind only Oedegaard (41), Erling Christiansen (40) and Bjorn Svensson (37).
Haugan finished seventh for his 11th career top 10 finish in 18 career finished races.
Maurer finished in 14th for the Buffs, his sixth career top 20 finish.

COLORADO INVITATIONAL TEAM SCORES (Thru 4 of 8 races)—1. Colorado 360; 2. Utah 303; 3. Denver 276; 4. Montana State 244; 5. Alaska Fairbanks 231; 6. Alaska Anchorage 174; 7. Wyoming 30.

MEN'S 10K FREESTYLE (23 collegiate finishers)—1. Samuel Hendry, UU, 25:52.3; 2. Bernhard Flaschberger, DU, 26:02.9; 3. Walker Hall, UU, 26:21.2; 4. Magnus Boee, CU, 26:37.5; 5. Brian Bushey, UU, 26:39.8; 6. Andreas Kirkeng, DU, 27:07.7; 7. Oyvind Haugan, CU, 27:12.5; 8. Magnus Noroey, UAA, 27:27.7; 9. Ari Endestad, UAA, 27:29.7; 10. Matt Seline, UAA, 27:34.8. Other CU Finisher: 14. Alexander Maurer, 27:45.5.

WOMEN'S 5K FREESTYLE (22 collegiate finishers)—1. Anna-Maria Dietze, CU, 15:07.9; 2. Hanna Abrahamsson, CU, 15:16.1; 3. Marie Pulles, UAF, 15:32.3; 4. Weronika Kaleta, CU, 15:54.8; 5. Tilde Baangman, MSU, 16:00.7; 6. Kendall Kramer, UAF, 16:06.2; 7. Celine Mayer, UU, 16:07.9; 8. Ezra Smith, UU, 16:08.8; 9. Pascale Paradis, UAA, 16:12.2; 10. Anna Pryce, MSU, 16:31.8. Other CU Finishers: 11. Elena Grissom, 16:48.5; 14. Kili Lehmkuhl, 16:57.2.

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Players Mentioned

Hanna Abrahamsson

Magnus Boee

Cleo Braun

Anna-Maria Dietze

Elena Exenberger

Elena Grissom

Emma Hammergaard

Kaitlyn Harsch

Oyvind Haugan

Hugo Hinckfuss

Karolina Kaleta

Weronika Kaleta

Will Koch

Kili Lehmkuhl

Alexander Maurer

Fredrik Nilsen

Luka Riley