Ted Ligety won the world Cup super combined race in Wengen, Switzerland today with the second-fastest slalom run and a solid run on the downhill.

Normally in super combined races the downhill is first and then the slalom. But the order was reversed for this competition because it was snowing too hard early for a safe downhill race.

Ligety, who runs a summer race camp on Mount Hood, posted the second-fastest run in the slalom and then raced fast enough in the downhill to hold off a tough group of speed specialists including the Norwegian downhill champion Aksel Svindal.

Alexis Pinturault of France posted the fastest slalom time but lost ground in the downhill and finished in second. Croatian Natko Zrncic-Dim finished third, and American Bode Miller broke into the top 10, finishing ninth overall.

Ligety dominated the World Cup in giant slalom last season but has dropped off a notch in 2013-14. His win today in super combined was his first in World Cup competition, but far from his first top result in that discipline. In fact, Ligety’s first top-level win as a ski racer came as a relative unknown in the 2006 Olympics in Torino, when he won the gold medal in super combined  at the age of 21, beating out Svindal, Bode Miller and Austria’s Benjamin Raich.

Here is a killer video of Ligety shredding the slalom gates to take control in that 2006 Olympic win, long before he was recognized as one of the greatest racers in history:

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Last modified: January 17, 2014