Ligety, Ted

Ted Ligety, in full Theodore Sharp Ligety, (born August 31, 1984, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.), American Alpine skier who was the first American man to win two Olympic gold medals in Alpine skiing events.

Ligety began to ski when he was two years old. He started racing competitively at age 10 and quickly earned the nickname “Ted Shred” from his coach. By that age he had progressed from the Park City (Utah) farm team to the Park City ski team, and during his teens he rose into the junior ranks of the sport. He became part of the U.S. Ski Development Team in 2004. That year he won a silver medal in the slalom at the Junior World Championships in Maribor, Slovenia, and finished 23rd in a World Cup slalom race in Sestriere, Italy. Both finishes helped Ligety secure a spot on the 2005 U.S. ski team.

Ligety competed at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, in the slalom, the giant slalom, and the Alpine combined, and he won gold in the combined. It was the only event he completed during the games. Ligety had finished in 22nd place after the downhill portion of the combined, but his performance on the two slalom runs was enough to capture the gold. (He was disqualified from the slalom and failed to finish in the giant slalom.) At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Ligety competed in the slalom, the giant slalom, the supergiant slalom (super-G), and the super combined—an event made up of one downhill and one slalom run—but his best finish was fifth place in the super combined. He competed in the same four events at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, where he took the gold in the giant slalom, becoming the first American to win that event at the Olympics. Ligety returned to the Olympics at the 2018 Games in P’yŏngch’ang, South Korea, but he failed to medal in any of his three events.

Outside the Olympics, Ligety also excelled in World Championship and World Cup competition. He won his first medal in World Championship competition, a bronze for the giant slalom, at Val-d’lsère, France, in 2009, and he won his first World Championship gold, also in the giant slalom, at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in 2011. At the 2013 World Championships in Schladming, Austria, he won gold medals in the giant slalom, the super-G, and the super combined, becoming the first person to win three or more gold medals in a single competition since French skier Jean-Claude Killy achieved that feat in 1968. He also won a gold medal in the giant slalom at the 2015 World Championships. In World Cup competition, Ligety captured five season titles in the giant slalom event (2008, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2014). He retired from competitive skiing in 2021.

In 2006 Ligety and Italian businessman Carlo Salmini founded Shred, a company that specialized in creating bright-coloured helmets, goggles, and sunglasses for ski racers.