Colorado Springs, CO – Ted Ligety’s historic 2.75-second margin of victory in the Oct. 28 giant slalom that opened the 2013 Audi FIS Alpine World Cup season has earned him the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athlete of the Month award for October.

“This is a big honor. There are so many incredible athletes across all Olympic sports who produce incredible performances every month,” Ligety acknowledged. “Soelden was probably a once-in-a-career experience. I put in the hard work to know that I could win, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the margin to be so big.”

Ligety’s blistering of the World Cup field was even more impressive as it came during a raging snowstorm on the Rettenbach glacier and in the first race on the hotly contested new giant slalom skis mandated by the International Ski Federation (FIS) after the 2012 season. On the books, it was the first giant slalom win of that magnitude since legendary Swede Ingemar Stenmark posted two separate margins of around four seconds 34 years ago.

“What Ted did in Soelden is a true testament to the hard work that he’s put in over the summer – really since last winter – working on the new skis, testing the new skis, modifying prototype after prototype, just putting in an extreme effort,” added Sasha Rearick, U.S. Ski Team men’s alpine head coach. “He also had a few weaknesses in his skiing that we really focused on this summer to make him more of a complete skier so that on any hill on any day he could execute the best skiing in the world.”

A voting panel selected Ligety from a pool of nominees submitted by National Governing Bodies across the spectrum of summer and winter Olympic sports with online fan voting via Twitter accounting for a percentage of the total vote.

Ligety will race this Sunday in a World Cup slalom held in the Arctic Circle of Levi, Finland, before returning to the U.S. to prepare for the Audi Birds of Prey races Nov. 30-Dec. 2 in Beaver Creek, Colo.