Ligety and Shiffrin Dominate USOC Award

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (April 5) - World Championships gold medalists and Audi FIS Alpine World Cup champions Ted Ligety (Park City, UT) and Mikaela Shiffrin (Eagle-Vail, CO) have again been honored by the U.S. Olympic Committee as Athletes of the Month, this time for March. It is the fourth time in the last six months that Ligety has been voted to the honor and the third consecutive month Shiffrin has recieved the award. The USOC Athlete of the Month award, which spans all Olympic sports, has not seen such consistency by any athlete in recent history, especially two athletes in the same sport.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Ted Ligety (Park City, UT) and Mikaela Shiffrin (Eagle-Vail, CO) have again been honored as USOC Athletes of the Month, this time for March.
• It is the fouth time in the last six months that Ligety has been voted to the honor and the third straight month Shiffrin has won the award.
• Ligety's hometown of Park City will host a celebration in his honor on April 6 at Park City Mountain Resort beginning at 1 p.m. MT
• Shiffrin was honored by her hometown of Vail at Vail Mountain along with Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) on March 29.
• Ligety capped a record World Cup season with his fifth and sixth giant slalom victories in March for his fourth World Cup giant slalom title.
• The sixth win links him to great Ingemar Stenmark as the only man to have six GS wins in a single season.
• In February Ligety won three gold medals at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships to become the first man since Jean Claude Killy 45 years ago in 1968 to win three or more gold in one World Championships.
• Shiffrin, 18, produced a historic sophomore Audi FIS Alpine World Cup season with four slalom victories and the season-long title, the fourth youngest in history to win the globe.
• Her thrilling March victory at the World Cup Finals came to a crescendo as Shiffrin erased a 1.17-second first-run deficit with the fastest final run time to win the title over Tina Maze of Slovenia, who had led the standings by seven points heading into the final race.
• Shiffrin also captured the World Championship slalom gold medal in February to become the third youngest woman in history to accomplish the feat.
• A voting panel of prominent journalists votes on the awards each month from a pool of nominees submitted by National Governing Bodies across the spectrum of summer and winter Olympic sports. Online fan voting via Twitter also accounts for a percentage of the total vote.

LINKS
Facebook
Twitter
USSA Network

HELP THE TEAM
Athletes like Ted Ligety, Mikaela Shiffrin and their U.S. Ski Team teammates rely on the support of the American public. Click here to support the team.