Ligety-split: Park City skier is fastest of them all

TORINO, ITALY — The first time he tried out for the Park City Ski Team, he didn't make it. Once, when the younger kids all beat him in a junior race, he skied at nights in the masters program to see if he could figure out what he was doing wrong. He wasn't even put on the U.S. Ski Team's development roster until the ripe old age of 18.

Now, at 21, Ted Ligety is the youngest U.S. alpine skiing gold medalist ever and the first homegrown Olympic gold medalist in Utah's long and storied winter sports history.

In the combined downhill-slalom event that concluded under the lights Tuesday night on the slalom course at Sestriere Colle, Park City's Ligety was the fastest of them all. The Olympic pressure, or whatever it was, that one by one sent nearly every skier who was supposed to beat him skidding off course, blew him instead through the poles like a tailwind.

He was in 32nd place after the downhill — decidedly his weakest of the combined's two disciplines — and then started clawing back.

After recording the fastest slalom run in the field on the first of two slalom runs, he found himself third in the standings.

After his second slalom run, the only way he could see the best skiers in the world was with a rearview mirror.

He won by .53 of a second.

It was only the fourth time in Olympic history an American man has collected a gold medal in alpine skiing.

Racing third-to-last among the contenders, Ligety watched from the finish area as the two skiers who could wrestle the gold away from him made their attempts.

First, Ivica Kostelic of Croatia, himself something of an interloper with six knee injuries and three years between his last World Cup victory, skied across the finish line after a clean run. But the brother of famed women's skiing champion Janica Kostelic was still more than half a second behind Ligety.

Finally, Austrian Benjamin Raich entered the course — and Raich was no interloper. A bronze medalist in combined four years ago in Salt Lake, he is the reigning combined world champion and had won two of three combined events coming into the Olympics for a commanding 145-point lead in the World Cup standings.

Plus, the Tiger Woods of combined had an 86th-of-a-second advantage to work with.

Near the midway point of his run, Raich was still ahead of Ligety. But then the Austrian caught an edge, missed a gate and skied sideways off the course.