Ligety falls short in G.S.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Ted Ligety was all of 21 years old when he stepped on this stage for the first time. The youngest member of the U.S. ski team at those 2006 Olympics, he’d not yet even won a World Cup race. He was projected to be a star four years later in Vancouver, but racers prefer to do things quickly and Ligety surprised even himself by winning an Olympic gold medal in Turin.

“I have no idea how this will change my life,” Ligety said then.

Twelve years, 25 World Cup victories and one more Olympic gold later, Ligety is the face of the U.S. men’s Alpine team in Pyeongchang. Now 33 with a repaired back, a reconstructed knee and three Olympics in the rearview mirror, Ligety stood at the top of an Olympic giant slalom course for one of the final times Sunday morning, and he turned in a run not at all as aggressive or inspired as the 21-year-old Ligety once had.

“My goal was definitely to try to be challenging for a medal here,” he said. “I thought that was definitely in my range.”

Sunday’s race, in fact, was his best chance at a final Olympic medal. He’d won three world titles in the giant slalom and was the defending Olympic champion. He entered the Games ranked eighth in the World Cup standings in the event, still a strong candidate to contend for the podium. His initial run, though, did not go as planned, and he finished 2.44 seconds off the lead, knocked out of contention with a time of 1:10.71.

“I was really surprised when I saw the time. It didn’t feel like I crushed it, but it didn’t feel 2 ¹/2 seconds bad,” he said with a laugh.

There were 110 competitors in Sunday’s field. Ligety was older than all but three. The gold medal winner was 28-year-old Austrian Marcel Hirscher, a man who attacks the gates like a lion, a man Ligety once frequently beat.

The giant slalom is settled by combining the times of two runs. Hirscher posted the morning’s fastest run and held on to his lead with a second run of 1:09.77. He was followed by Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen, 1.27 seconds behind for silver, and France’s Alexis Pinturault 0.04 seconds behind Kristoffersen for bronze. Hirscher, who already won gold last week in the combined event, was this event’s overwhelming favorite. He’d raced five World Cup giant slaloms this year and won four of them, taking bronze in the fifth. He hasn’t missed the podium in the event since 2016.

“He crushed it, for sure,” Ligety said of the Austrian’s run. “He’s been good all year, so that’s no surprise.”

For Ligety, the giant slalom was his third event of these Pyeongchang Games and likely his last. He finished fifth in the combined event last week but failed to finish Friday’s super-G race.

On Sunday, Ligety felt good and looked smooth but wasn’t bounding through the course quite like his younger self, and certainly not like the morning’s top finishers. The conditions were near-perfect, and the course felt easier than he’d anticipated. But still, he said, “I just didn’t attack the way I should have or could have.

“I just thought it would run a little bit more challenging than the way it did. ... I just kind of like overskied it. ... No excuse.”

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