BEAVER CREEK — Andrew Weibrecht skied too aggressively at the bottom and Ted Ligety wasn’t aggressive enough at the top, so the two American Olympic medalists had to settle for unsatisfying results Saturday in a World Cup super-G here.
Weibrecht finished 10th and Ligety 11th in a race won by Austrian Hannes Reichelt, but both had hopes of reaching the podium. Weibrecht took a silver medal in super-G at the 2014 Olympics and bronze at the 2010 Olympics. Ligety’s best event is giant slalom — he is the Olympic champion — but he is the reigning world champion in super-G and had top-five finishes the previous two super-Gs here.
Kjetil Jansrud of Norway had won three straight races but finished second, 0.52 of a second behind. Alexis Pinturault of France, like Ligety one of the tour’s top giant slalom racers, finished third.
“This start is really daunting and intimidating,” Ligety said. “You just can’t let that get to you, and I skied way, way, way too conservatively up top. It looks hairy and gnarly, and it’s actually pretty easy if you’re a good technical skier. Pinturault slayed everybody up top, and there’s no reason for me to be losing a second to Pinturault on the first split.”
Weibrecht had trouble negotiating a pair of tight gates near the bottom of the course exiting a section called the Abyss
“The top was really good, solid skiing,” Weibrecht said. “By the GS start I just got a little squashed in there, had a mistake and I knew I was losing a little time so I started pushing it a little harder. I had a couple little ragged mistakes. And then down bottom, coming out the Abyss, it’s just a tough switch. It comes at you really quick, you’ve got to be in the right place and you’ve got to commit before you can see the gates. It’s a really, really tough couple of gates.”
Weibrecht had the solace of producing a good result — for him — in Friday’s downhill. Starting 62nd, he finished 30th to score World Cup points (top 30) for the first time in downhill since Jan. 23, 2010.
“The downhill was huge,” Weibrecht said. “I was real excited about that, just to be in the points there is a huge step. I looked it up, it was 1,777 days since I scored a downhill point, so that’s nice, to get that monkey off my back.”
Ligety gets to race GS Sunday on a course where he has won four of the past five years.
“It’s always fun to ski GS here,” Ligety said. “It’s an awesome hill, had a lot of success here, so I’m looking forward to it for sure.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616, jmeyer@denverpost.com or
