Crans Montana, Switzerland – Fighting through incredibly soft snow conditions on Sunday in Crans Montana, Utah’s Ted Ligety was slowed to ninth place in the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup giant slalom at Crans Montana won by Italian Massimiliano Blardone.

As the course deteriorated under warm temperatures, the first run leaders struggled to maintain speed in the final run. After leading the giant slalom standings for the first half of the season, Ligety is now 132 points behind Austrian Marcel Hirscher with two giant slalom races left in the season. Hirscher, who was second in Sunday’s race, also leads the World Cup overall standings by 92 points over Croatian Ivica Kostelic, who remains on the disabled list following knee surgery earlier this month.

Two more U.S. ski racers reached the points on Sunday as Bend, Ore.’s Tommy Ford finished 19th and Tim Jitloff, of Reno, Nev., crossed the finish line in 22nd.

“Both Tommy [Ford] and Ted [Ligety] made a big tactical mistake on the bottom,” said Sasha Rearick, Head Coach for the U.S. Ski Team men. “It didn’t cost Ted as much as I thought it did.”

Canadian ski racer Jean-Philippe Roy’s goal of qualifying for the World Cup finals in giant slalom will go down to the wire after he didn’t finish Sunday’s race.  The 33-year-old, of Ste.-Flavie, Quebec, went down on his hip in soft conditions as he pushed for speed in the first run. The top 25-ranked racers in each discipline qualify for the World Cup finals in Schladming, Austria, and Roy was 25^th in the giant slalom standings going into Sunday’s race. He now sits 29^th, 14 points behind the 25^th-placed racer, with one race left to go in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, on Mar. 10.

“I’m going to have to man up in the next one,” said a disappointed Roy after the race. “I was upset. I knew I had to have a good race today. World Cup finals is always a big goal. I’ve done it, I think, four times and two times I couldn’t go because I was injured. It would be nice to make it again.”

The men’s World Cup tour moves to Kvitfjell, Norway for a pair of super G races and a downhill.

“Ted is going to skip Kvitfjell, take a couple of days break to rest from these crazy last few weeks, then he’s going to train slalom and giant slalom the week prior to Kranjska Gora,” Rearick explained. “He is not skiing with the tremendous cleanliness and crispness that we know he can ski with. Over the rolls here, he just wasn’t skiing with a lot of confidence.”

OFFICIAL RESULTS
Audi FIS Alpine World Cup
Crans Montana, Switzerland – Feb. 26, 2012
Men’s Giant Slalom