WHISTLER — Four years ago, Ted Ligety won a gold medal at an Olympics where no one expected him to be noticed. This time he was a legitimate medal contender but left empty-handed.
“That’s ski racing,” Ligety said Saturday. “Sometimes you get hot and sometimes you don’t.”
Ligety won the combined at the Turin Games, won the World Cup giant slalom title in 2008 and leads in the GS standings this season with one GS remaining.
Here he was fifth in super-combined, ninth in GS and went out in the first run of Saturday’s slalom. Meanwhile teammates won eight alpine medals.
“The Olympics weren’t that sweet for me,” Ligety said. “It was fun to be here, and it was cool to watch the U.S. success, but obviously I was hoping for more from myself.”
Racers cherish medals but usually attach more significance to World Cup titles. Individual races can turn on luck, good and bad, but World Cup titles represent excellence across the span of a season.
“I was really expecting to get a medal and hoping to get a medal, but I’ve been doing this my whole life,” Ligety said. “In order to survive in this sport and survive those disappointments, you have to be able to move on. I can still be the best in the world in giant slalom. I just didn’t perform on the one day.
“It’s not that much of a failure. When you win an Olympic medal, things change for the better, but if you don’t, nothing really changes. It’s not like it’s a disaster.”
