World Champion skier Ted Ligety was down to his second-to-last event in Sochi, the giant slalom. The alpine skiing events at the Olympics began a week ago, but Ligety had a bumpy start that resulted in no podium finishes. In fact, his highest placement was 8th in the Super Combined Slalom.

Ligety's other two races, the Super Combined and Super-G were ever worse, with 18th-place and 14th-place finishes respectively. But he finally broke through on Wednesday, capturing his first gold medal of these games for Team USA in Alpine skiing.

Ligety had won Olympic gold before. But his first place finish in the combined back in Turin eight years ago was a pleasant surprise. Ligety was just 21 years of age at the time of the victory and wasn't the same dominating force he is on the slopes today.

So it goes without saying that Ligety had a ton of pressure riding on the outcome of this race. Once he officially won his second gold medal he repeatedly said that it was an "awesome" turn of events. After all the giant slalom was his marquee event.

"I've been wanting to win this medal my whole life, but in a realistic sense the last four years," he remarked. "All season long everybody talks about the Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. At a certain point I was just like, 'Let's do it already. Let's just get this thing over with so we can stop talking about the pressure and everything with it.'"

"Ski racing is probably the least guaranteed sport out there," Ligety said. "It's really rare when the favorites win. So far here this is the first event that an actual favorite's really won. That's pretty regular on the World Cup. The best in the world are on the podium often times but don't always win. It's easy to say they failed because they get third or second or fourth of fifth. It's not that simple."

Bode Miller would surely agree. In hindsight, the only victory that seemed to come easy for Ligety was his aforementioned first gold.

"The first gold medal came a lot easier," he said. "At that point, there was a lot less of the struggles of the World Cup, the struggles of the grind. To win a gold medal now, especially after having Vancouver [in 2010] being really tough and the Olympics so far here being lackluster, to be able to throw down in an event I had the most passion in and I was the favorite in ...

"To be able to do that is awesome."

Congrats Ted!

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