Ted's excellent adventure at the Olympics

SESTRIERE, Italy — It took more than an hour for Ted Ligety to make it the 100 yards or so from the finish line to the world's print media waiting to hear him talk about his early exit from the Olympic slalom final here Saturday.

Getting from A to B isn't as easy as it once was.

He was tugged this direction and that, doing television interviews, huddling with ski team coaches, talking with teammates, signing autographs.

Finally, he walked over to the reporters' bay and said, "How's it going?"

Whew. Fame hasn't changed him.

At least not yet. Eleven days after his unexpected gold-medal Valentine's Day performance in the men's combined, and 60 minutes after failing to medal — or even finish — in the slalom, the 21-year-old Ligety did not blow off any post-race interviews, as Bode Miller already had, nor did he blow up, nor did he blame anyone other than himself.

And he still opened with the same "How's it going?" as when he won gold.

Ligety, a product of Park City's racing program before he graduated onto the U.S. Ski Team, was skiing as fast as anyone when he straddled a slalom pole near the finish line in Saturday's first of two runs. His finishing time was just two-hundredths of a second behind the best racer to that point, Benjamin Raich of Austria, the gold medalist in the giant slalom (and eventual winner of the slalom).

But then race officials reviewed the video of Ligety's run and confirmed the straddle, resulting in an immediate disqualification.

"Yeah, I was pretty sure I straddled," said Ligety. "I wasn't 100 percent sure, but I thought I'd felt it. There was enough doubt that I went for it anyway."

"I had some bad luck here," he said, "but I had good luck, too."

Indeed, if Ligety hadn't straddled the pole by inches — and on a relative easy section of the course — he might have gone on to win gold in the slalom.

Then again, if Bode Miller hadn't straddled a gate in the combined and Raich hadn't missed a gate and skied off course, Ligety might not have won in the combined.

The learning curve at the Olympics was a sharp one for Ligety, and he seemed to soak it all in.

For one thing, he was quick to realize that the Olympics, for all its hype and attention, provides a much easier field to race against than regular World Cup stops. Restrictions on the size of teams dilutes the competition.