Two-time World Cup giant slalom champion Ted Ligety, the 2006 Olympic champion in the combined, reports regularly in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany — All the top alpine skiers will be here over the next 12 days for the world championships, which are held every other year.
It’s an important event. I still think the Olympics is infinitely more important, because there are so many other sports in the Olympics and it’s a much grander stage.
But the world championships are cool because it is a grand stage, it means so much more than a World Cup race and there’s so much more pressure. To have the title of world champion is nice for those people who have it.
I will be racing all disciplines here except downhill — super-G, super-combined, giant slalom and slalom.
I was 13th in Sunday’s World Cup giant slalom in Hinterstoder, Austria. Even though it was a bad result, in a way it was a relief. I felt like I didn’t push as hard as I could have, and I was still only nine-tenths of a second behind. That’s somewhat encouraging.
I finished third in the giant slalom here last year at the World Cup finals. I was skiing a little on the conservative side in that race, because I just needed a good result to clinch the season GS title, which I did.
It’s going to be exciting racing here. There’s usually a little bit of a positive bias for Americans here because there’s a U.S. Army base nearby.
