Ted and Dane

How about Valentine's Day for an emotional roller coaster? In the span of one evening we watched one teammate win an Olympic gold medal, and then heard that another teammate had hurt himself badly in a Nor-Am downhill.

Ted Ligety's accomplishment in the Combined was simply awesome. Olympic Gold is the ultimate achievement in sport, and he did it in commanding style. He worked his way back from a three-second deficit in the downhill, over the course of two ensuing runs of slalom. It was proof that he is the best slalom skier this year; there is no one else in the world who could have possibly made up that kind of time on the likes of Schoenfelder, Kostelic and Rocca. It was also exciting to see his smile afterwards, as his mind tried to come terms with what he had just done!

Then the news came about Dane Spencer: a broken vertebra and pelvis suffered in a nasty crash at Big Mountain, MT. The good news was that his spinal cord and head were both safe. But still, to think of such a good friend laid up in an ICU makes my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach.

In any other year, Dane would have qualified for the Olympics on the strength of his 12th and 20th place finishes in World Cup GS races this year. However, the US has an incredibly strong GS team this year and his results left him just shy of qualification.

So he was being a trooper, having agreed to go on the Nor-Am speed tour and work on his SG and DH while everyone else was competing in Torino, but really just biding his time until the World Cup tour picked up again in Korea in early March.

In light of that, it feels incredibly hollow that he injured himself in such a relatively meaningless event for him, before he even had a chance to get his revenge back at the top level of racing.

A gold medal and a bad injury in one day: a dramatic example of the highs and lows possible in alpine ski racing. I hope Ted thoroughly enjoys his crowning achievement, and my thoughts are with Dane, wishing him a smooth and relatively speedy recovery.