Olympic combined champion Ted Ligety reports regularly from the World Cup tour in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer. This is Ligety’s final installment of the season.
Lenzerheide, Switzerland – I had high hopes coming into this season that I would make another breakthrough, the way I did last season when I won the Olympic gold medal and finished fourth in the World Cup slalom standings.
It didn’t happen. I finished 15th in the slalom standings and eighth in giant slalom.
I was happy with my improvement in GS and with my progress in the speed events. To get fourth place in the downhill at the World Cup finals last week was kind of ridiculous. It was a tailor-made hill for somebody like me – more of a high-speed GS than a real downhill – but it showed my downhill skills are improving.
After the downhill at the finals, I thought for sure I was going to do well in the GS and slalom here, but I just flattened out, finishing 14th in slalom and 10th in GS. I just didn’t have anything left in the tank. I felt fine physically, but I didn’t have the hop in my step I normally do.
I’m going to do a lot of ski testing this spring because I want to be ready for the preseason camps in Chile and New Zealand. I want to be thinking about my skiing then, not my skis. I think that was a big part of the problem this season; I spent most of the preparation period figuring out my setup after changing ski brands. It set me back a little, and I think if I get everything figured out now, come those first races in October I’ll have everything dialed in.
One of the most impressive things I saw this season was the way Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal was able to perform under pressure at the World Cup finals and hold off Austria’s Benjamin Raich to win the overall title.
Raich skied well at the finals, finishing second in the super-G, scoring points in the downhill and winning the slalom, but it still wasn’t enough. It was pretty mind-blowing how well Svindal did, and how clutch Raich was.
I was super-psyched for Svindal, a good friend. It’s cool to see such a good guy win it all.
