Trying to Adjust for the Glare

Ted Ligety sat in a noisy cafe at the athletes’ village here Tuesday and tried to explain his first week as an Olympic Alpine skiing champion.

“It’s kind of weird, almost anticlimactic,” the 21-year-old from Park City, Utah, said. “I don’t know, when you’re a kid you always dream about winning the Olympics. It seems different than you would have imagined. I don’t know exactly how, but for some reason it does. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting.”

So many things have swirled through his head.

First, why him?

Daron Rahlves was supposed to win a gold medal in Turin, not Ligety. It was the only missing piece in Rahlves’ career.

Bode Miller was going to win multiple medals here. So far, he has none.

Lindsey Kildow had the buildup; Julia Mancuso arrived here in her own RV.

Yet, when it has been time to punch it, only Ligety has come through.

He won an unlikely gold in an unlikely event -- the combined -- and now becomes one of the top contenders in Saturday’s slalom, his best event.

Ligety skied two brilliant slaloms after finishing 32nd in the downhill portion of the combined. Miller seemingly had the event won before he was disqualified for missing a gate in the first run of slalom, pushing Ligety from fourth to third place.

Ligety skied the fastest second run, 43.84 seconds, but still needed leader Benjamin Raich of Austria to hook a gate only yards from the finish to win.

Ligety, who had never won a major race in his life, won gold in his first Olympic attempt.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he said.

It’s been a strange week. He got 300 e-mails the next day and that was fun, has done some promotional work for one of his sponsors, Panasonic, and was set to do a remote with David Letterman, but other than that ...

Ligety actually told his agent, Ken Sowles, to scale back his cash-in opportunities because he still had two more events to race. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever reap full benefits of his gold. Ligety will continue on the World Cup circuit after Turin and won’t be home until April. “By then, I’m sure it will simmer down some,” he said of the hoopla.

Ligety skied out of Monday’s giant slalom after leading the field after two intervals and now prepares for Saturday’s slalom, where he will be pitted against Italy’s Giorgio Rocca.

Ligety thought his combined performance might spark a medal gush for a highly touted U.S. team, but it’s possible he could leave Turin as the only U.S. Alpine medal winner.

The congratulatory hugs have been nice, but he was hoping to hug someone back.

“I definitely would have thought Daron or Bode would have gotten a medal in the super-G or downhill for sure,” he said. “I thought that was kind of a gimme.... It’s kind of depressing, kind of unbelievable for sure.

“We were expecting Lindsey also to get a medal, or Julia super-G.”

There’s no textbook for making an Olympic champion but whatever it takes, Ligety seems to have it.

He stood at the start gate on his second slalom run, knowing what was at stake, but feeling eerily calm. “Actually I wasn’t that nervous,” he said. “I’m pretty good at staying relaxed in the start gate. I tend not to think about the race at hand until I’m in the start gate and actually have to do it. It’s one of those things, if you let it get to you, then it starts to affect you.”

How can Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway, 34 and nursing a sore knee, step up to win the super-G gold?

Why is Austria’s Hermann Maier so good under pressure?

“A lot of guys’ problems in the Olympics is, they approach it like it’s the Olympics, not like it’s a World Cup,” Ligety said. “If you approach it like it’s just the World Cup, it’s going to be a lot easier to ski your own race. You’re going to be a lot faster, you’re not going to be as stiff in the start gate.”

U.S. ski team coaches have been impressed with Ligety’s quiet confidence. He didn’t show much promise until his late teens but has progressed rapidly the last two years. He has still not won a World Cup race, but he has three top-three slalom finishes this year and ranks third in the overall standings.

U.S. Coach Phil McNichol liked the way Ligety never backed down from anyone, not even Miller.

“Bode plays king of the roost, that kind of deal, and Ted won’t have it sometimes,” McNichol said. “I wouldn’t say that’s a conflicting or combative relationship, it’s actually fun to watch, a young guy come in and actually start beating Bode in training.”

Ligety does not deny taking Miller on. “I think a lot of guys my age have that same mentality,” Ligety said.

Miller’s reaction to the upstarts?

“He wouldn’t get mad about it, or start punching the snow,” Ligety said. “But his intensity was brought up when young guys like us would start pushing him a little bit.”

Ligety started the Olympics as a relative unknown but has a chance to emerge as America’s first double-gold winner in Alpine.

Italy, for certain, has taken notice.

Rocca is the World Cup leader in slalom, a five-time winner on the circuit this year. He is expected to win gold for his home country.

After Ligety had beaten Rocca by a whopping 1.39 seconds in the combined, the Italian pulled out of the super-G and giant slalom to concentrate on his main event.

Rocca is reportedly studying tapes of Ligety’s second slalom run in combined to see how the American mastered the line.

“I think definitely that combined slalom got into his head a little bit for sure,” Ligety said of Rocca. “ ... It’s definitely kind of cool to be in a place where you’re kind of intimidating those guys not to race the events they were going to race before.”

After a week, maybe that’s what it means to be an Olympic champion.