Ligety 3rd as Win Streak Ends

VAL D'ISERE, France (Dec. 9) – World Champion Ted Ligety battled soft snow and a shortened course to finish third in the Val d'Isere giant slalom behind race winner and reigning Audi FIS Alpine World Cup overall and GS champ Marcel Hirscher of Austria. The podium kept Ligety in the World Cup GS driver's seat and eased him closer to overall leader Aksel Lund Svindal, but halted his win streak after taking the first two GS races of the season by a massive 4.81 seconds.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Ted Ligety (Park Ctiy, UT) finished third in the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup giant slalom in Val d'Isere to halt his GS win streak at two races.
• The podium kept him in the GS points lead and inched him closer to World Cup overall leader Aksel Lund Svindal (440-402).
• Ligety captured the Soelden and Beaver Creek GS races by a collective 4.81 seconds.
• Reigning overall and GS champion Marcel Hirscher won the race with podium newcomer Stefan Luitz of Germany in second.
• The race, originally scheduled for Dec. 8, was moved to Sunday and shortened due to heavy snows earlier in the week.
• Universal Sports will rebroadcast the race at 7 p.m. ET on its 24 hour TV network.
• Ligety will skip the downhill next weekend in Val Gardena, Italy in favor of training. He will race the super G and following giant slalom in nearby Alta Badia.

QUOTES
Ted Ligety
Val d'Isere's always tough, it's not a hill I particularly like. It's not very user friendly, it's very steep the whole way. I'm happy to salvage it and to walk away from this hill with a podium when it could easily have been a DNF (did not finish).

It's a very unforgiving hill. On a normal course you would have a little bobble and on this hill it becomes a big, big mistake.

Sasha Rearick, Head Coach
We as a team skied too conservative in the first run. Fortunately Ted is such a fast skier that skiing conservative still keeps him in the game.

Ted is going to skip the downhill in Val Gardena and will train slalom in Italy instead. We're cashing in some chips with the Italian team who we partnered with to train at the U.S. Ski Team Speed Center at Copper Mountain. They've offered us free accommodation and training leading up to Val Gardena and Alta Badia, so we're going to take advantage of that.

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