Ligety will try (broken) hand at Levi slalom

Ted Ligety was more than a second behind teammates Jimmy Cochran and Tom Rothrock in slalom training Monday. The fact that he was skiing with just one pole likely had a lot to do with it. Why would he ski with just one pole? There’s a good reason for that, too. His hand is broken.
    The 2006 Olympic combined gold medalist suffered a diagonal fracture to the second metacarpal bone (index finger) on his right hand when he hit it on a gate while training on the Pitztal glacier in Austria last week.
    “I’m working on getting mobility and strength back,” Ligety said Monday from Keystone, Colorado, following his last day of training before he, Cochran and Rothrock head back to Europe to compete in the first World Cup slalom race of the 2006-07 season in Levi, Finland, on Nov. 11.
    “It hurts less and less every day,” Ligety said. “I’ll be able to race, for sure. I’ll deal with the pain. If the race was tomorrow, it would be a setback. I guess because the race is five days from now, it won’t be too big a setback.”

TED LIGETY was more than a second behind teammates Jimmy Cochran and Tom Rothrock in slalom training Monday. The fact that he was skiing with just one pole likely had a lot to do with it. Why would he ski with just one pole? There’s a good reason for that, too. His hand is broken.
    The 2006 Olympic combined gold medalist suffered a diagonal fracture to the second metacarpal bone (index finger) on his right hand when he hit it on a gate while training on the Pitztal glacier in Austria last week.
    “I’m working on getting mobility and strength back,” Ligety said Monday from Keystone, Colorado, following his last day of training before he, Cochran and Rothrock head back to Europe to compete in the first World Cup slalom race of the 2006-07 season in Levi, Finland, on Nov. 11.
    “It hurts less and less every day,” Ligety said. “I’ll be able to race, for sure. I’ll deal with the pain. If the race was tomorrow, it would be a setback. I guess because the race is five days from now, it won’t be too big a setback.”
    Ligety is the focus of a Ski Racing Short Films series with Rival Films.
    That said, slalom skiing is difficult with a broken hand because pole planting and blocking, both of which require two strong hands, are so vital to the discipline.
    “Pole plants are a basic skill to have to even make it down a demanding slalom course,” said U.S. men’s tech coach Greg Needell, who also said Ligety was “close” to being able to ski with two poles on Monday. “You have to have a strong grip and the pole in a locked position. Ted uses it in a lot of different ways, it’s definitely part of his skiing. He has a pretty big pole plant when he recovers, he uses a lot for recovery when he’s on course. He gets a lot of big angles where his hand is on the ground or close to it.”
    Ligety has been protecting his injured hand in training the last couple of days, which has made for some painful gate-turning on the slalom course.
    “I reach my body around the gate and I hit it with my elbow,” Ligety said. “It’s a little painful going down like that. You have to stay on top of it 100 percent of the time.”
    Thus Ligety was 1.1 seconds behind Cochran on the slalom course Monday, with Rothrock finishing between the two. When the three skiers — who, along with Bode Miller will constitute the men’s U.S. representation in Levi — trained giant slalom over the weekend, Ligety, despite racing sans poles, put down the fastest time.
    “In GS, Ted doesn’t pole plant,” Needell said. “His poles are in his hand just for balance. Ted obviously has good balance. He skied real well training GS with no poles.”
    Slalom without two poles is a different story, although Ligety pulled it off better than most, according to his coaches.
    The U.S. contingent and Keystone operations crews injected the training course Monday, making for very fast, race-like conditions, and Needell lauded Ligety’s talent in being able to just complete such a course with only one pole.
    “Skiing slalom with one pole is difficult, not just because of the pole plants, but because of balance and core strength,” Needell said. “It’s amazing he could do complete runs with only one pole. It was impressive skiing. He might not be as fast as the other guys, but it’s impressive.”
    The U.S. men’s slalom team hopes to have a couple days of training in Finland before the Nov. 11 race. Ligety plans to have two poles in hand for the occasion.
    “I think I’ll be able to ski much, much faster once I have two poles in,” Ligety said, adding that he came back to two-pole racing “ten-fold” two years ago after breaking his hand in a non-skiing related accident.
    “Hopefully I’ll feel bomb-proof after skiing slalom without a pole,” Ligety said. “Training today, we all had good gates, but I was about a second-and-a-half back from where I normally am. It’s understandable, not being able to pole plant or cross block. Still, I expect to go up there [to Levi] and try to win.”
    Ligety pointed out that the second metacarpal bone that he broke is associated with the muscle that controls his wrist.
    “My brain is telling my body not to fire it,” he said.
    Ligety is wearing a brace under his glove and said that while each day there is some improvement, it will be six weeks before the bone heals.
    Needell said Ligety is as fast as could be expected given his broken hand.
    “He’ll improve a lot before race day,” Needell said, adding that Cochran and Rothrock have dialed in their equipment and “are skiing as well as they ever have in slalom.”
    As for Ligety’s pronouncement that he, despite his broken hand, still has his eye on the top podium spot at Levi, Needell was not surprised.
    “I don’t think he’s ever not looking to win,” Needell said.

SR SHORT FILMS
Ted Ligety: Expectations
Hangin' with Ted Ligety