Ted Ligety plans race schedule for Sochi Olympics

By Nick ZaccardiOct 15, 2013, 1:03 PM EDT

Ted Ligety, perhaps the top multiple-medal threat for the U.S., does not expect to enter every Alpine skiing event at the Sochi Olympics.

The two-time Olympian (and 2006 Olympic combined champion) raised expectations for his third Games by winning three gold medals at the World Championships in February.

Ligety, 29, swept the super-G, giant slalom and the super combined in Schladming, Austria, becoming the first man since French legend Jean-Claude Killy in 1968 to win three or more golds at a single worlds.

Ligety also entered the slalom but did not finish the first of two runs. He did not enter the downhill.

Which brings up the Sochi Olympics schedule. Ligety has never raced a downhill at an Olympics or a World Championships. That streak should continue in 2014.

The Park City, Utah, native said he plans to enter the same events in Sochi as he did in Schladming and at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics — super-G, giant slalom, slalom and super combined but no downhill.

“They (downhills) just take up too much time with three training runs and the race; really it’s a four-day event in a lot of ways,” he said. “If I want to prepare for the giant slalom, slalom and super-G as much as I’d like to, then that just doesn’t make too much sense. So, unless I’m winning downhills (this season), I don’t foresee myself doing the downhill at the Games.”

The downhill is the first event of the Alpine skiing calendar on Sunday, Feb. 9, two days after the opening ceremony. Ligety’s race schedule would begin a week after the opening ceremony:

Friday, Feb. 14 — super combined
Sunday, Feb. 16 — super-G
Wednesday, Feb. 19 — giant slalom
Saturday, Feb. 22 — slalom

Ligety raced in two of the eight downhills on last year’s World Cup circuit. He placed 31st in Beaver Creek, Colo., and did not finish in Kitzbuehel, Austria.

He’s readying for the first World Cup event of this season in his favorite discipline, giant slalom, in Soelden, Austria, on Oct. 26. There, he’s expected to go head to head with his biggest rival, Austrian Marcel Hirscher.

Infostrada’s medal predictions for Sochi

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French Open: Ons Jabeur completes Grand Slam quarterfinal set; one U.S. player left

By OlympicTalkJun 5, 2023, 6:56 AM EDT

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No. 7 seed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia dispatched 36th-ranked American Bernarda Pera 6-3, 6-1 in the French Open fourth round, breaking all eight of Pera’s service games.

Jabeur, runner-up at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year, has now reached the quarterfinals of all four majors.

Jabeur faces 14th-seeded Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia or Spaniard Sara Sorribes Tormo, playing on a protected ranking of 68, in Wednesday’s quarterfinals.

Pera, a 28 year-old born in Croatia, was the oldest U.S. singles player to make the fourth round of a major for the first time since Jill Craybas at 2005 Wimbledon. Her defeat leaves Coco Gauff, the 2022 French Open runner-up, as the lone American singles player left out of the 35 entered in the main draws.

The last American to win a major singles title was Sofia Kenin at the 2020 Australian Open. The 11-major drought matches the longest in history (since 1877) for American men and women combined.

Later Monday, Gauff plays 100th-ranked Slovakian Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. Top seed Iga Swiatek gets 66th-ranked Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko. The winners of those matches play each other in the quarterfinals.

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

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Jim Hines, Olympic 100m gold medalist and first to break 10 seconds, dies

By OlympicTalkJun 5, 2023, 6:06 AM EDT

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Jim Hines, a 1968 Olympic 100m gold medalist and the first person to break 10 seconds in the event, has died at age 76, according to USA Track and Field.

“I understand that God called him home today and we send the prayers up for him,” was posted on the Facebook page of John Carlos, a 1968 U.S. Olympic teammate, over the weekend.

Hines was born in Arkansas, raised in Oakland, California and attended Texas Southern University in Houston.

At the June 1968 AAU Championships in Sacramento, Hines became the first person to break 10 seconds in the 100m with a hand-timed 9.9. It was dubbed the “Night of Speed” because the world record of 10 seconds was beaten by three men and tied by seven others, according to World Athletics.

“There will never be another night like it,” Hines said at a 35th anniversary reunion in 2003, according to World Athletics. “That was the greatest sprinting series in the history of track and field.”

Later that summer, Hines won the Olympic Trials. Then he won the Olympic gold medal in Mexico City’s beneficial thin air in 9.95 seconds, the first electronically timed sub-10 and a world record that stood for 15 years.

Hines was part of a legendary 1968 U.S. Olympic track and field team that also included 200m gold and bronze medalists Tommie Smith and Carlos, plus gold medalists Wyomia Tyus (100m), Bob Beamon (long jump), Al Oerter (discus), Dick Fosbury (high jump), Lee Evans (400m), Madeline Manning Mims (800m), Willie Davenport (110m hurdles), Bob Seagren (pole vault), Randy Matson (shot put), Bill Toomey (decathlon) and the men’s and women’s 4x100m and men’s 4x400m relays.

After the Olympics, Hines joined the Miami Dolphins, who chose him in the sixth round of that year’s NFL Draft to be a wide receiver. He was given the number 99. Hines played in 10 games between 1969 and 1970 for the Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs.

He remains the only person to have played in an NFL regular season game out of the now more than 170 who have broken 10 seconds in the 100m over the last 55 years.

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