With two events to go in the Utah Invitational, the Colorado Buffaloes ski team is sitting comfortably in fourth place.
CU improved one spot Tuesday after the completion of the alpine events in Park City, Utah.
The event will conclude Jan. 22-23 with freestyle and classical Nordic races at Soldier Hollow, Utah.
CU finished with five skiers in the top 10 in slalom Tuesday with freshman Erika Ghent leading the way in third place. Ghent finished with a time of 1:43.20, and was just .02 seconds behind second place Lindsay Cone of Denver, and .15 seconds behind winner Malin Hemmingsson of New Mexico.
Junior Katie Hartman finished in eighth and junior Carolina Nordh in tenth for the CU women while sophomore Taggart Spenst in eighth and senior Drew Roberts in ninth for the CU men.
After being in fifth place Monday after the giant slalom events, both the men’s and women’s teams improved their score with the men doing 15 points better and the women nine to give the Buffs a total of 370 points after two days of competition.
“We always anticipate that we ski stronger in the slalom than the GS,” CU head coach Richard Rokos said in a news release. “And that was evident today with our results. But we still have a lot of room to improve.”
New Mexico leads the competition with 467 points, Denver is second with 423 and Utah third with 378.
At Monday’s giant slalom events, Ghent was the only CU skier to finish in the top 10 at fifth place. The best men’s skier was freshman Spencer Nelson who finished 11th.
Contact CU Independent Sports Editor Ron Knabenbauer at Ronald.knabenbauer@colorado.edu.
