Ted Ligety, the 2006 Olympic combined gold medalist and two-time World Cup giant slalom season champion, reports regularly in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
VAL D’ISERE, FRANCE — I won another giant slalom here last week, six days after winning a GS at Beaver Creek, so I’m leading in the GS standings.
It was pretty sweet, because it’s such a different hill from Beaver Creek. It’s a polar opposite in a lot of ways. To stay on the roll I’ve been on, and also to win by a pretty wide margin (more than a second) gives me a lot of confidence.
It was my seventh career win on the World Cup. When I’ve won before, it’s been by small margins, and I hadn’t won early in the season until this month. So it’s nice to get off to such a good start.
It’s been a long time since I had two races in which I didn’t make any major mistakes. That was a big part of winning both races.
Val d’Isere is super steep the whole way, and the gates are set only 20 meters from each other. Most GS courses the gates are set 26-28 meters apart. It’s the kind of hill where there’s not a lot of arcing going on. It feels awful the whole way down, even when you’re skiing well.
There’s also a lot of terrain (changes) in it, so you’re always fighting to stay in the course.
My GS skis are really working well, and my boot set-up is, too. When everything is working really well, it’s a lot easier to make it down without mistakes. My equipment is a crucial part of those two victories.
The slalom here didn’t go so well. I straddled a gate in the second run, hiked back up the hill to ski it legally and finished 25th.
The first run I made a couple of big mistakes. I was more than a second behind the leader, but I also had a couple of sections I skied really well, especially compared to how I’ve been skiing slalom. It was a big step up.
It was a difficult course on the second run. Five of the 30 guys who qualified for the second run didn’t finish it.
This weekend I’m racing the super-G at Val Gardena and the GS at Alta Badia. I’ve been fourth, fifth and seventh at Alta Badia but never made the podium. It would be nice to continue my winning streak in GS, but that’s easier said than done.
