Skiing Hosts Nordic Portion of Utah Invitational

Friday, February 14

Midway, UT

All Day

University of Utah

5/10K Freestyle (I)

Skiing Hosts Nordic Portion of Utah Invitational

2/10/2020 3:33 PM | Skiing

SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah ski team hosts the Nordic portion of the Utah Invitational beginning on Friday, Feb. 14 with the freestyle interval start races beginning at 9:00 a.m., followed by the classic mass start races on Saturday, Feb. 15, beginning at 9:00 a.m. All four races will be held at Soldier Hollow Resort in Midway.

The Utes will be looking for their third meet win of the season after winning both the Colorado Invitational and Denver Invitational. The Nordic team has been especially strong with the Utah women scoring over 100 points in all four races this season and taking two of three spots on the podium in five out of the six races. The men have scored over 90 points in three of four races, including a perfect 111 points in the 10-km freestyle at the Colorado Invitational.

A Utah skier has won five of the six women's races this year, led by four wins by Guro Jordheim. She has not finished lower than fourth this year, is the only skier in the RMISA to finish every race in the top five and has 16 career victories. Leah Lange earned her first career victory in last weekend's Aspen RMISA freestyle qualifier and finished second in the Owl Creek Chase RMISA qualifier to earn RMISA Skier of the Week honors. She has three total podium finishes this year and is second in the RMISA with five top-five finishes. Mariah Bredal has four top-five finishes this year with two podium finishes. Jordheim, Lange and Bredal are three of just four skiers in the league who have finished every race in the top 10. Karianne Moe has finished in the top 10 five times with a season-best finish of second in the 5-km classic at the Denver Invitational. Julia Richter, last year's NCAA Champion in the 5-km freestyle, had a season-best finish of fourth in the 5-km freestyle race this weekend in Aspen. She also competed in a World Cup race in Germany back in January.

For the men, Samuel Hendry has competed in just two college races this season but won both of them back in the Colorado Invitational in January. He recently earned a place on Canada's U23 World Championships team after competing in Nor-Am Cup races in Quebec. Luke Jager has three podium finishes in his four races competed this season, which is tied for second in the RMISA. Logan Diekmann and Ola Jordheim are two of four skiers in the league who have finished every race in the top 10. Diekmann has four top-five finishes and a podium finish this season and Jordheim's best finish of the season is fifth. Noel Keeffe, who has also competed in World Cup, has two top-10 finishes on the year as does Bjørn Riksaasen.

The alpine portion of the Utah Invitational is Feb. 22-23 at Park City Mountain Resort.