Four in a row for Herland as Utah Concludes Busy Stretch

Thursday, January 15

Aspen, Colo. / Aspen Highlands

University of Utah

Giant Slalom

Johs Braathen Herland, center, has won all four men's alpine races so far on this season's RMISA schedule.

Photo by: Adri Meyer

Four in a row for Herland as Utah Concludes Busy Stretch

1/15/2026 5:14 PM | Skiing

Results

First Utah alpiner since 2019 to win the first four races of a season

ASPEN, Colo. – The Utah Ski Team has raced four days of alpine competition this season and Johs Braathen Herland has won all four outings on the men's side, most recently on Thursday when the Utes had giant slalom events as part of the Colorado Invitational.

The last two days of races—both GS—took place at Aspen Highlands after the Utes raced in slalom at Loveland Ski Area. One race in each discipline counted for the Denver Invitational as well as the CU meet.

With the alpine portion of the CU meet now complete, Utah is in third place in the team standings with 300 points. The host Buffaloes (356) lead the meet with just nine points separating Denver in second place.

"There were some good runs this week," said head alpine coach JJ Johnson. "We're really close to seeing a lot of good stuff and obviously there were some highlights. Johs has really bought in and allowed himself to not get pulled by the idea of doing something more when we have everything we need here. It's allowed him to keep getting better and he just keeps building off of it."

Dating back to 2019, Herland is the first Utah skier—men's or women's—to win the first four alpine races of a season. In 2023, Wilhelm Normannseth won the first two races when that year's alpine schedule began with a pair of slaloms at Snowbird.

Women's Race
Utah's Melanie Dahlberg used a top-five opening run to put herself in great position to finish the day fourth overall (2:02.80), giving Dahlberg another career-best result. Maisie Blyth recorded her first top-nine finish as a Utah Ute (2:03.13) and Kaila Lafreniere (2:03.44) secured key points for the team in 13^th place.

Christina Jacobsen was 16^th and Maddie Kaiserman took the No. 18 spot after going into the day as the 34^th athlete to start.

Blyth was the 20^th racer out of the gate on the morning run and found herself in 12^th place at the flip. Lafreniere used a top-three second run to move up five spots to 13^th in the final results.

Men's Race
Johs Braathen Herland had top-two runs on each of his trips down the hill and his total time of 1:57.99 put Herland atop the podium for the fourth straight race.

Sindre Myklebust placed in the top-nine (2:00.07) and Pierick Charest was 16^th (2:00.85) to round out the scoring for the day.

Next Up
The RMISA schedule now heads into a bit of a break as teams are idle until Nordic action resumes with the Utah Invitational on Jan. 24-25. Utah's home meet with begin with a 7.5K freestyle interval start (Jan. 24) and follow up with a 15K classic mass start (Jan. 25). Alpine races in the meet will take place in February.

With the alpine portions of the Denver and Colorado meets now in the books, Utah's alpine team will resume competition from Jan. 31-Feb. 3 as the team races at Mount Rose Ski Tahoe. Two of those events will be part of the alpine-only Nevada Invitational with two others scored as RMISA qualifier races.

Follow the Utah Ski Team on social media @utahskiteam. Download the Utah 360 app here.