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.
I finally won a race! This season has been super frustrating, so to finally win in Kranjska Gora feels like a little redemption. I was psyched because it was a repeat win from last year’s GS, and puts me within striking distance to defend the GS title. Though it’s an off chance since I’m still 73 points behind with just one race left.
Kranjska Gora has always been an awesome hill for me; it was the venue of my first World Cup points, first Europa Cup win, second World Cup podium and second win. It’s one of the classic race hills on tour. It’s super steep out of the start for a ways then has a long rolling section, then another steep pitch at the end—definitely a technical skier’s GS hill. It was super warm on the race day, and for some reason all my World Cup wins have been when it’s pretty warm. I don’t have a good explanation for this, other than I’m a fan of spring skiing, and you have to be clean on your edges when the snow gets a little slower, which is one of my strengths.
After Kranjska, I had the first real break since Christmas to refuel for this last week. I spent the week in Garmish, Germany at my friend Felix Neureuther’s house. Felix is Germany’s best racer, and one of the top slalom racers on the World Cup. The week was awesome. Garmish was hosting the Davis Cup — Austria vs. Germany — and since Felix is friends with a couple of the tennis players, we basically sat on the court right next to the teams. It was crazy sitting that close to that level of tennis. I’ve always been a big tennis fan, so it was cool meet those guys. Nicolas Kiefer gave Felix one of his rackets, which we played with during our own mini Davis Cup, Germany vs. USA. (Kiefer’s racket was pretty impossible to play with, for players of our level and rustiness.) I ended up losing in the duel — it was a close match, but I choked down the stretch.
One of my coaches, Josh Applegate, and I went to the salon for some interesting haircuts while we were in Garmish, too. For most of the summer I was trying to convince Josh to grow a sweet afro then shave it into a flat top, but I was always met with staunch resistance until I said I’d grow my hair out and get a perm if he got the flat top — a proposal he couldn’t pass up. The ladies at the salon didn’t believe that I actually wanted a perm, and gave me funny looks the entire time they were rolling my hair onto all the curlers. Josh had a picture of Will Smith from “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” to help guide the barber. I think it was her first flat top. So now we look ridiculous for the rest of the year, but it’s definitely not as bad as the mullet I had last year.
I’m now in Are, Sweden for World Cup Finals. Hopefully I can get my slalom back on track. And who knows, I could get lucky and walk away with the GS title!
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