One of the most accomplished American skiers of all time has announced retirement from the slopes.
A born and raised Utahn, Ted Ligety decided to step away from alpine ski racing to spend more time with his family after an injury hampered his final world championships appearance in Italy earlier this month.
“My body’s taken a beating over all these years,” Ligety said in an interview with FOX 13’s Brian Schnee. “I was really hoping to walk away from it feeling relatively healthy. Unfortunately, the body fell apart a week prematurely.”
36-year-old Ligety is excited to get back to spending more time with his wife and their three young children.
“Family has become the main priority,” Ligety said. “In order for me to become the best I could possibly be on the mountain, I need to ski a lot, I need to train a lot; that would require multiple trips where I’m gone for six-plus weeks, and it’s hard for me to do that at this point.”
Ligety will still call Park City home with Deer Valley Resort as his "home mountain." He also plans to build his company "Shred" and will work with GoPro and some of his other sponsors on content creation.
Q: What was it like growing up and skiing in Utah?
A: @tedligety: “I’m of course bias being a homegrown Utah boy, I think Utah skiing is the best in the world."@SkiUtah | @FREESKIER pic.twitter.com/HLa6n9Txrm
— 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐞𝐞 (@brian_schnee) February 22, 2021
“Growing up in the mountains in Utah, you couldn’t ask for a better playground to be on the snow,” said Ligety, reminiscing on the early points of his career. “Whether we were training in the gates, but you know, we spent a ton of time free-skiing, powder skiing, ripping around the whole mountain.”
Ligety skied on the world's biggest stage for 17 years. He’s the only American male skier to win two Olympic gold medals in alpine skiing, and he won dozens of gold medals while on the world cup circuit.
To hear more about Ligety’s time spent growing up in Utah, traveling the world skiing, recounting his most memorable competitions and what’s next, watch his full conversation with FOX 13’s Brian Schnee here:
