Skiing has Busy Week of Racing Coming Up

Friday, February 5

Aspen, CO

All Day

University of Utah

Freestyle Sprint

2/3/2021 4:07 PM | Skiing

Nordic and Alpine Team will be in Action

SALT LAKE CITY – After getting a small break, the Utah Ski team is back in action and about to have a full week of racing.

The alpine and Nordic teams will be back in action as the Nordic team is racing in Aspen, Colorado and the alpine team will have two races with the first one being at Snowbird and the second one being on their home track in Park City.

First to race is the Nordic team this weekend starting Friday, February 5 and Saturday, February 6. After a small break, the team got some good training in this past week.

"We got some good training in this last week and got to stay home which was nice," Director of Skiing Fredrik Landstedt said. "We're excited about going to Aspen, and hopefully we'll be able to come out on top again. We have a smaller team of course, so it'll be a little tougher this week."

Several of the Utah skiers are in Finland competing in the U23 World Cup race. The skiers that are in Finland are Novie McCabe, Sydney Palmer-Leger, Samuel Hendry and Luke Jager.

The first day of racing in Aspen will be a freestyle sprint. The race will be about a mile and there will be a qualification race and then the top 30 skiers go into heats. Then, the racers ski heats of six and the top two or three go to the next round. There will be a quarterfinal, semi-final and then final to determine the winner.

In the first two races of the season, Utah dominated finishing in first place in both meets. Since the current scoring system was adopted in 2014, the Utah Nordic team now has the six highest Nordic point totals in a meet with five of the six coming in the last five meets that were scored.

The alpine team will also be back in competition starting Monday, February 8. The first two days of racing will be the slalom hosted hosted by Westminster at Snowbird, and then starting Thursday, February 11 they'll be racing in the giant slalom at Park City.

"They've been getting really good training now for a couple weeks and now I expect big things from them next week," Landstedt said. "They will get to compete at home. They haven't competed much at Snowbird, but hopefully they'll get a chance to practice there and being at home is definitely an advantage. When we race in Park City, we will definitely be prepared. Hopefully those will be some very strong competitions."

It'll be a busy February after this run as the team continues to prepare for the NCAA Championship. After racing in Aspen this weekend, both teams will be racing in Utah until they travel to New Hampshire for the Championship March 10-13.