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25 Feb - Ligety wins third Gold
25/02/2013 17:02:36
US ski racer Ted Ligety has become the first man in nearly 50 years to win three golds at the Alpine Skiing World Championships.
28 year old Ligety completed his hatrick by winning the giant slalom competition by a convincing margin of .81 seconds at the current championships in Schladming, Austria, following on from his victories in the Super-G and super-combined competitions.
Only four other people have ever managed to win three golds at the bi-annual event and with racers increasingly specialising in one or sometimes two disciplines, the chances of doing so are perhaps harder in the modern era than they once were.
The last person to complete the achievement was Jean-Claude Killy, who won four golds 45 years ago in 1968. Ligety is the first-ever American and first ever non-European to achieve this.
Ligety now has five world championship gold medals overall equalling joint US record holders Bode Miller, Julia Mancuso and Lindsey Vonn who each have the same total, five world championship medals over all, the most for an American. But Ligety is the first skier of either gender to win all three in one world championships.
The three other men to have won at least three golds in one championships are Toni Sailer (Austria), who won four in 1956 and three in 1958; Eriksen (Norway), who won three in 1954 and Emile Allais (France), who died last autumn, who won three in 1937.
“This hasn’t sunk in yet,” Ligety said. “It’s just really cool to have your name mentioned with Jean-Claude Killy’s. You dream about it as a little kid, but I don’t know if you ever really think it can happen.”
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