Men's Journal

U.S. Ski Team member Ted Ligety is a 2006 Olympic gold medalist and the defending World Cup giant slalom champion. This season, he’s blogging regularly from around the world for mensjournal.com as he attempts to defend his title and win the overall crown.

By Ted Ligety

I’m never that excited about the proposition of forgoing my New Year’s Eve festivities to sit on an airplane, but this year I jumped at it. Instead of celebrating New Year’s at home in Park City, I was on a flight to Moscow to race in a dual slalom (two courses set side-by-side with racers competing against each other) on the largest scaffolding structure ever built — a 500-foot long slope constructed directly in front of Moscow University; a massive Soviet-style building with a red star on its spire, serving 20,000 students. Sixteen of the best skiers in the world were invited to race in the event, including Bode Miller and former World Cup champion, Aksel Lund Svindal, and the winner took home a $30,000 check.

I arrived midday on January 1, and got to ski down the slope, which was covered with 140,000 cubic feet of snow trucked in from Siberia and, to the surprise to all of the racers, was steeper than we expected. The snow was iced down so there wasn’t any easing into warm up. The slope also had a large knoll half-way down, which some of us were launching off, and throwing 360’s for the small crowd watching in the finish.

The next day, we had an early morning of site seeing which included a tour of the Kremlin and Red Square. It was amazing to check out the history behind these sites, especially since we’ve all seen and heard so much about them. After playing tourist for the morning, we had lunch with the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, an avid skier. We didn’t really get to talk to him that much since there were 30 or so athletes and coaches there, but we got the chance to shake his hand and have a few photo ops with him.

We had the race that night under the lights, with 20,000 or so people packed into the square below. I raced against Swiss skier Giorgio Rocca in the first round, who has been one of the best slalom skiers over the past few years, winning the World Cup Slalom title in 2006. I was definitely the crap talker of the group, trying to have fun with the dual format, while also trying to get into my opponents heads. It must have worked on Giorgio because I beat him both runs to move onto the next round, where I met Italian Manfred Moelgg. Manfred won the World Cup slalom title last year so he was definitely one of the favorites to win. We battled it out first run, but I squeaked by him for a two-tenths-of-a-second lead going into the second run. It was all I needed to make it into the semi-final.

German skier Felix Neureuther had been destroying his competitors all night, especially with his start, which was perfectly timed and powerful. The start was the hardest part to master. It was similar to horse racing blocks with the doors that open, so if timed correctly, it was possible get a huge lead out of the blocks. If timed incorrectly, you’d slam into the doors before they’d open, either causing you to get tangled in the start or lose all of your momentum for the first gates. Felix seemed to be squeezing through them when they were only halfway open, so I knew the pressure was on when I had him in the semi. Luckily we’re good friends, so I knew I could have a good time crap talking him in the start. But he was prepared for me, having equal or better comebacks for everything I said. First run he got me by a good bit out of the start — I skied well to close the gap but it wasn’t enough, he had me by a little more than a tenth of a second. The next run he used his lead and I never caught up, so I was on to the loser’s final against Bode in the battle for third place and a little bit of prize money. Bode wasn’t having any of my head games in the start — he just stared down the course. We were in a dead heat until I made a mistake before the knoll and lost most my speed. With Bode having a half second lead on me for the final run of the night, I knew I had to do something special out of the start and ski great to catch him. I focused in on the lights counting down on my door, trying to time it perfectly. As the last light before the green opening light flashed, I threw myself forward, then BAM right into the doors just as they were about to open. I was a tenth too early. My skis got tangled in the door as I was falling out of the start. Luckily stayed on my feet to finish in what’s seeming to be my favorite position this year: fourth. Neureuther ended up winning the event.

Putin invited us to ski with him and President Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi the next day, the resort where the 2014 Winter Olympics will take place. Most of us jumped at the chance and we loaded a chartered jet to Sochi. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was raining so we ended up not getting to ski with Vlad and Dmitry. But we did have a pretty cool lunch with them. I gave Vlad a few Obama stickers to put on his limo or wherever he wanted (he said he’d put one in the Kremlin). A traditional Russian music group performed at the lunch. Vlad and Dmitry danced and I found it pretty funny to watch two people of their stature tear up the dance floor. After eating we loaded the plane and headed to Zagreb, Croatia, where I have a night race in a couple days. I’ll let you all know how it goes in my next post.

Read Ted’s previous post about the opening World Cup race here.

Read Ted’s account about his off-season training in New Zealand and Chile here.