Men's Journal

Ted Ligety in the finish corral in Solden, Austria Photo credit: courtesy of Erica MacConnell

U.S. Ski Team member Ted Ligety is the defending World Cup giant slalom champion. This season, he’ll be blogging regularly from around the world for mensjournal.com as he attempts to defend his title and tries to win the overall crown.

By Ted Ligety

My offseason ended on August10th and on October 25th I skied my first race of the season in Sölden, Austria. But before I get into that, let me first tell you about my summer, which included training in Chile and New Zealand and, oh yeah, buying a 1989 Holden Camira, building a jump, and Dukes of Hazzarding it through the Kiwi countryside.

New Zealand is always my favorite trip every year. The skiing is pretty good, but it’s the atmosphere and the off-hill activities that make it awesome. We ski at Coronet Peak, which doesn’t get the most snow, but it’s perfect for training and has an awesome view over Queenstown (the self-proclaimed adrenaline capital of the world) and the surrounding area.

A couple years ago, some of my teammates and I started our own little car rally. The cars consisted of the U.S. Ski Team rental cars (old Subarus), and each year we were lucky to get them back in one piece. Our highlights included following an off-road jeep tour up a river. I was driving and my teammate Jimmy Cochran was sitting on the roof directing me through the big rocks under the rushing water. At one point my feet were six inches under water operating the pedals. When we reached the tour turn-around point, we decided to check where the air intake was and made sure we hadn’t taken on any water. As it turned out, two more millimeters and we would have flooded the engine. Despite escaping the river unscathed, the car never smelled quite the same the rest of the trip.

On another expedition we set up a racetrack on a gravel floodplain next to a different river, with tennis balls for gates. The course had a good little straightaway to start where we’d go about 40 mph into 180 degree e-brake turn, then the course meandered around the gravel field utilizing all the banks and the other terrain. Each of us took turns driving while the other guys timed. (No better way to translate our ski race tactics into the “real world,” we figured.) After a few guys had a go at it, I jumped in hammering the first e-brake turn well, but made a few bad turns after that so I needed to make up time. I decided to cut off the line and started going faster than the surface or the car could really handle. As I reached the apex of the turn, a blowing sound erupted. The front two tires had rolled off the bead of the car… not good. We were 20 miles from the nearest town with no cell phones to get help. Luckily, it wasn’t much time before a car passed. This was all a few hours after Timmy Kelley (an awesome slalom skier on the team), caught the car on fire briefly by getting stuck in a ditch with dry grass (we pushed the car off in time and stopped the fire safely).

This year it was decided we had to one-up the previous year’s antics, so Jimmy Cochran, Timmy Kelley, Cody Marshall (another teammate) and I wired our physical therapist Paul (a kiwi), 750 bucks to buy us this sweet red 1989 Holden Camira. The sole purpose of this beauty was to beat the crap out of it. In the beginning we just rallied it around dirt roads and gravel flood plains, but kept getting flats, so we decided we could get the best bang for our buck by jumping it. We first jumped it up a little bank, proudly getting all the wheels a few inches off the ground, but that sense of accomplishment wore off quickly. We needed to truly fulfill our need for adrenaline and danger, so we dug ourselves a jump. After a few ginger attempts at gaining moderate air, we started to drive toward the jump faster. Finally, we were going 50mph into the jump, launching a good 25 yards long and five feet high, all onto a flat landing. (Watch the amazing video here.) With every landing, the driver would get out either holding his neck from whiplash or have the wind knocked out of him from the ridiculously hard impact. Sadly, the Holden had endured all the fun it could handle. With the car’s hood smashed in, bleeding fluid, and suffering from a broken front axel, Rally Fest ‘08 ended — which was a good thing, because it was time to fly home and get ready for another training camp in Portillo, Chile.

Portillo is a far more laid back camp centered around speed training (downhill and super-G training). You couldn’t ask for a more picturesque place to train. The hotel is close to a frozen lake, way up in the Andes. The nearest town is about two hours away. The hotel is situated right on top of the biggest mountain pass between Chile and Argentina. Portillo is home to one of the best one-minute downhill training hills in the world. It starts at the base of a super steep chute, then rolls out through a flat rolling trail with two huge jumps, one of which we’ve been measured flying around 70 yards from. My teammate Marco Sullivan once broke his heel landing off it, and Australian Jono Brauer packed it in pretty hard after a landing.

Portillo is the ramp up for Jimmy Cochran and me. As I mentioned, our first World Cup was in Sölden, Austria October 25th and since we only had a few weeks before our first race, it was a mad dash to get our equipment dialed in. In many ways Portillo is a lot like a mix of Groundhog Day and The Shining. Groundhog Day because we wake up every day at 6:30 AM to perfect blue bird days and are skiing by 7 AM. We are done by 11 AM, eat, take a nap, and do dryland training — which is either spinning or volleyball — followed by video sessions where we dissect our training from that day. We then enjoy “tea time,” followed by 2 hours of reading or internet, meetings, dinner, perhaps a movie, then to bed. Repeat 14 days in a row. And The Shining because we’re stuck two hours from civilization on a snowy mountain and all of us get a little cabin fever and stir crazy.