All non-collegiate athletes have been taken out of the results of this article.
Middlebury took 225 points from Friday’s giant slalom and grabbed the lead with a resurgent second run. Every scoring athlete improved upon their first run with the exception of Caroline Bartlett, who dominated both runs. Dartmouth sits behind Middlebury with 218 points and UVM is in third with 185 points.
Bartlett took control of the day from the very beginning. She outpaced the rest of the women’s field by 1.06 seconds, followed by Foreste Peterson of Dartmouth. Peterson would end up falling in the second run leaving the door wide open for the Middlebury sophomore. Bartlett took the second run by an even wider margin, 1.92 seconds, leaving a combined 3.89 seconds of room between her and second place finisher Kelly Moore, of Dartmouth.
Lisa Wedsjoe of the University of New Hampshire came in third, 4.10 seconds behind.
Bartlett’s teammates Lexi Calcagni and Kathleen Utter did their part to contribute to the team’s success. Calcagni moved from came in eighth second run to move into 9th place and Utter skied into fifth on the second run to move from 19th into 11th place overall.
William St. Germain, from the University of Vermont, laid down two solid runs to take the first men’s race in 2017 and to boost UVM into third place for the weekend. Robert Cone, from Middlebury, got the best of him second run. Cone won the second run by .93 seconds and he ended the day in second place, .92 behind St. Germain. Dartmouth freshman Tanguy Nef came in third, 1.16 back, to podium in his debut Carnival.
Cone was just one of three Middlebury men to move up significantly in in the latter half of Friday.
Cone, Riley Plant and Colin Hayes moved a combined 44 spots. All three took advantage of their start position second run and while the sun hit the track at Whiteface, they waited excitedly to see where they would eventually end up. Cone moved a staggering 20 spots, Plant moved from 23rd to seventh and Hayes moved up ten spots, to end in eighth place.
Middlebury was second in each gender. UVM won the mens side of the race, led by St. Germain and Dartmouth won the women's race with three girls in the top ten.
Racing will continue tomorrow with the men’s and women’s slalom races.