KRANJSKA GORA, slovenia — American Ted Ligety won the season’s next-to-last World Cup giant slalom Saturday.
The giant slalom champion in 2008, 2010 and 2011, Ligety trails Austria’s Marcel Hirscher, who finished third, by 92 points with one race remaining next week in Schladming, Austria.
With a victory worth 100 points, Ligety must win the final race and hope Hirscher doesn’t score points.
“It’s a lot to make up. I need Hirscher to do what I have done — I made some mistakes,” Ligety said. “Most of the time, everybody goes out one race or has one major mistake, and he hasn’t done that so far this year. If he does that, I am right back in it.”
Ligety built on his commanding first-run lead to finish in an aggregate time of 2 minutes, 22.47 seconds to beat second-place Alexis Pinturault of France by 1.61. Hirscher was 2.03 behind.
Beat Feuz of Switzerland, who failed to qualify for the second run, remains in the overall lead with 1,250 points, 55 ahead of Hirscher.
Vonn skis out of slalom •ARE, sweden —Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany won a World Cup slalom, and overall champion Lindsey Vonn skied out during her second run.
Hoefl-Riesch edged Veronika Zuzulova of Slovakia by one hundredth of a second. She finished in 1:49.85 for the 23rd World Cup victory of her career. Canadian Marie-Michele Gagnon was third.
Vonn was 15th after the first run. She skidded out on the last third of the course, failing to improve on her 1,808 overall points. The Vail skier is bidding to become the first female skier to break 2,000 points in one season.
Mikaela Shiffrin was fourth after the first run, but the 16-year-old from Eagle-Vail had a slower second run and finished tied for ninth.
Four races worth a total 400 points remain at the finals in Schladming, Austria.
