Steamboat Springs – It didn’t look good for the Colorado ski team on the eve of the NCAA championships. Bad enough the Buffs qualified 11 racers, one less than a full complement, and no team had won an NCAA title without a full team.
Then their top men’s alpine racer, freshman Pat Duran, broke his left femur in training three days before the first race.
“We lost the momentum before we started,” coach Richard Rokos said.
That made Saturday’s resounding victory so much sweeter. With an overpowering performance by their nordic contingent, the Buffs won their 17th national title. The University of Denver Pioneers, who were in the lead midway through the four-day event, finished fourth.
It was CU’s fifth NCAA title in 16 seasons under Rokos, who called it his toughest.
“There’s a lot of reasons this is special for us,” Rokos said. “We were fighting against the odds from the very beginning, and it was great to see how they came through in the end.”
Vermont managed a runner- up finish with 11 skiers in 2001. No other school has finished in the top three without 12 competitors.
“It was mathematically possible, and we proved that it is physically possible,” Rokos said. “It was unprecedented, but it’s done.”
The Buffs were in sixth place after Wednesday’s giant slalom, second after Thursday’s classical cross country races. They took a slim lead after Friday’s slalom – a disastrous race for DU – and won going away Saturday. The Buffs went 1-2-4 in the men’s 20-kilometer freestyle with Canadian Kit Richmond claiming the win.
Richmond had a bad case of the flu Thursday and struggled to a 19th place finish in the 10K classical race.
“My legs were on the threshold of blowing up on me, so I made sure my teammates were helping me out to lead a bit, switching off,” Richmond said. “It all came together at the end. I had just enough to make it count.”
CU nordic coordinator Bruce Cranmer hoped for one man in the top three or four, another in the top 10, another in the top 15. “I didn’t think we would be that strong, because we had a couple guys who were a little sick,” Cranmer said. “I didn’t think we would all be stacked up there.”
After the men’s race all but locked up the team title, CU’s Jana Rehemma of Estonia won the women’s 15K freestyle.
“Actually, that put more pressure on us, because we wanted to race well, too,” said Rehemma, who also won Thursday’s 5K classical race.
The Pioneers were staggered after the slaloms Friday night on historic Howelsen Hill. Two of their three women – France’s Florence Roujas and Norway’s Karine Falck Pedersen – were disqualified for gate violations. In the men’s race, John Buchar of Sweden had to hike to make a gate and finished 29th.
“If I were a hard-core coach, I’d say we didn’t get the job done,” said outgoing DU director of skiing Kurt Smitz, who won four NCAA titles in 14 seasons. “That falls back on the coaches, it falls on the director (Smitz) to make sure the coaches have the plan and then there’s always the element of luck. We’re a good enough team that regardless of a bit of bad luck, we should be able to overcome and put ourselves in a position of contention – which we kind of did for two days.”
Dartmouth freshman Glenn Randall, a highly touted prospect from Collbran (a small town near Grand Junction), finished fifth in the men’s 20K and was the top American finisher.
“It’s really exciting,” Randall said. “I really have high hopes for the future.”
