Ted Ligety's "once-in-a-career" giant slalom victory

Alpine ski race wins usually come by the hundredths of a second. Ted Ligety won the opening World Cup race of the 2012-13 season Sunday on the famous Rettenbach Glacier in Sölden, Austria, by a crazy 2.75 seconds.

It was, as he put it afterward, a "once-in-a-career margin."

It was also a demonstration of, as U.S. head coach Sasha Rearick put it, Ligety's "complete ability and confidence in himself."

Even on the best days, there is nothing inherently fair about alpine racing. And conditions Sunday were, in a word, godawful. "It was a tough day for everybody," Ligety said, adding, "I just fought and maybe took more risk than it was worth - than was maybe smart."

That's just modesty talking -- the guy from Park City, Utah, who posed for photos after the race with his parents.

Ligety is the 2006 Olympic gold medalist in the combined. He is a three-time World Cup season giant slalom champion.

He won in Sölden last year. Indeed, his most recent finishes there had read like this: 2-3-2-1.

But this was not only a new season. Everyone had to ski on new -- different -- skis. Rules changes mandated skis that were, to reduce a complex situation to its basics, a little bit longer but narrower skis designed to slow racers down.

Ligety was originally one of the most vocal opponents of the rules change.

Indeed, a blog he wrote last November decrying the change was entitled "Tyranny of FIS," the acronym a reference to skiing's international governing body. He remains a vocal proponent of athlete input into rules changes.

FIS officials have said many times they believe the rules changes will make the skiing safer.

By last February, meanwhile, after testing the new skis, Ligety discovered he was actually faster on them than the old ones. He called a blog he wrote then, in a reference to the new skis' minimum radius, "35 meters of irony."

Shortly before racing got underway at Sölden, in a video blog posted by American teammate Warner Nickerson, Ligety confirmed that, yes, he was in fact faster on the new skis in most GS conditions.

No one, however, counted on a set of variables like what race day Sunday brought: soft snow, variable light and a blizzard.

The GS consists of two runs. The winner is the guy with the day's lowest combined time.

Ligety ran his first run in near-darkness. He crossed four-hundredths of a second behind France's Thomas Fanara.

That, Ligety said afterward, "just fired me up," adding, "I knew I should have been in the lead."

He skied his second run in a virtual whiteout, the blizzard raging. He said, "I was just taking a ton of risk," adding, "It really paid out," the biggest margin of victory in a World Cup GS in 34 years. Manfred Moelgg of Italy took second; Austria's Marcel Hirscher, last season's overall and GS tour champion, third. Fanara came in fourth.

FIS records show that the time difference between the winner and second place in a World Cup GS has only been bigger six times before -- and all those in the 1970s. The biggest margin: 4.06 seconds, set by Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark in the 1978-79 season.

"I'm psyched," Ligety said after the second run. "I didn't want to leave anything out there. I was hammering!"

It's only one race in a long season.

But it went a long way toward re-establishing Ligety as the best GS skier in the world. Because it's not just that Ligety won, and by such a commanding margin. It's that he did it in such absurd conditions, and that he created that margin almost entirely in a single run.

"Ted's arguments he had on the skis were his own opinions but a lot of people agreed," Rearick said. "He's a vocal person and that showed in his arguments against the skis. But once he figured out this is what it is, he put all that energy, all that focus into making sure he was going to be the fastest and that he wasn't going to lose."

Hirscher asked rhetorically, "What can I say about the incredible Ted Ligety?

"Right now," Hirscher -- a local hero in Sölden -- said in quotes posted on the fisalpine.com website, "he is far away from me … he is in outer space. He skied awesome. He skied every gate perfect."

USADA's 'overwhelming' case against Lance Armstrong

On Wednesday, at my kids' school, at the outdoor amphitheater with the sun shining bright in the brilliant blue of an October California morning sky, I had the privilege of moderating a panel at which four U.S. Olympians spoke about dreams, goals, hard work and effort. Steve Lewis, the 1988 gold medalist in the 400 meters, delighted everyone with the tale of how he won when nobody thought he could. Courtney Mathewson talked about how the 2012 U.S. women's water polo team came together to win gold for the very first time. Nicole Davis, the U.S. women's volleyball libero, spoke about how persistence and effort had driven her and the team to silver in 2008 and 2012.

And Alexi Lalas, who played on the 1992 and 1996 soccer teams and is now an ESPN analyst, reminded everyone that winning isn't everything. It's the taking part. It's the struggle, the journey. It's -- the dream.

At the end of the program, we allotted 20 minutes for photos and autographs. You should have seen the kids, and even the grown-ups, rush down with their iPhones, their cameras and their pens and paper.

It's important to put all of that front and center on a day like Wednesday, when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency set forth in black and white the details of the "overwhelming" case against Lance Armstrong.

It's far too easy to make the case against Armstrong what, on one level, it is: a simple legal matter.

But that's not what it's about.

It's about something much, much bigger.

It's about changing the culture of sport.

That change has to happen so that we can all get back to what really matters: dreams, and goals, and autographs and pictures.

Doping is cheating. Cheating is wrong. There's no grey there.

Only by breaking through the code of silence in cycling, the "omertà,"  and getting those who had made bad choices to acknowledge them -- that, from the start, has always been USADA's ambition.

The document made public Wednesday marks a major step forward.

To be clear, none of the evidence detailed by USADA was obtained by the U.S. grand jury inquiry in Los Angeles involving Armstrong that was closed in February without the filing of any charges. Again -- none. USADA said Wednesday it had asked for copies of non-grand jury evidence but has gotten nothing.

Instead, it said, after that inquiry closed it launched its own and came to an unequivocal conclusion:

"… Lance Armstrong and his handlers engaged in a massive and long running scheme to use drugs, cover their tracks, intimidate witnesses, tarnish reputations, lie to hearing panels and the press and do whatever was necessary to conceal the truth."

The evidence against Armstrong, USADA emphasized, is "beyond strong; it is as strong as, or stronger than, that presented in any case" in USADA's 12-year existence.

USADA got to that point by offering everyone the same proposition:

Cycling has a doping problem. Meet with us. Change the culture. Be part of the solution.

Others took them up on that offer: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters, David Zabriskie.

Armstrong did not.

The level of detail in the USADA document can be astonishing.

In 1999, Hamilton told USADA, Armstrong won the Tour by using the banned blood-booster EPO "every third or fourth day."

In 2000, with rumors of a new test for EPO abounding, Hamilton said that 500 cc's of blood taken out earlier that year at a hotel in Valencia, Spain, went back in on the evening of Tuesday, July 11, in the Hôtel l’Esplan in Saint-Paul-Trois- Châteaux near Mount Ventoux; Hamilton said that he, Kevin Livingston and Armstrong -- the three best hill-climbers on the team and thus the three who were getting the transfusions -- "joked about whose body was absorbing the blood the fastest.”

Hincapie, meanwhile, is a five-time Olympian, long considered Armstrong's most trusted lieutenant, the only rider with Armstrong on all seven of Armstrong's winning Tour teams from 1999-2005.

USADA said Hincapie testified that he was aware of Armstrong's use of the blood-booster EPO and blood transfusions; that Armstrong provided EPO to him, Hincapie, for his own use; that Hincapie, like Armstrong, was a client of the Italian Dr. Michele Ferrari, who incorporated EPO and blood-doping into Hincapie's training program.

On his own website, Hincapie issued a statement that said he had doped but been clean since 2006. Two years ago, he said, he had been approached by U.S. federal investigators; more recently, by USADA. He said he "understood that I was obligated to tell the truth about everything that I knew. So that is what I did."

Ferrari is blandly described in the document as a "consultant" to pro cyclists.

The evidence, according to USADA, further includes banking and accounting records from a Swiss company controlled by Ferrari reflecting more than $1 million in payments by Armstrong; extensive e-mails back and forth between Ferrari and his son and Armstrong during a time period when Armstrong claimed not to be in touch; and a "vast amount of additional data," including lab test results and expert analysis of Armstrong's blood work.

Vande Velde, in a statement on his website posted Wednesday, said, "Ironically, I never won while doping. I was more or less treading water. This does not make it OK. I saw the line and I crossed it, myself. I am deeply sorry for the decisions I made in the past -- to my family, my fans, my peers, to the sport that I love and those in and out of it -- I'm sorry. I always will be."

Barry, in a statement posted Wednesday on his site, said, "As a boy, my dream was to become a professional cyclist who raced at the highest level in Europe." He signed his first contract with the U.S. Postal team in 2002: "Soon after I realized reality was not what I had dreamed. Doping had become an epidemic problem in professional cycling."

He went on to say that he doped, that he regretted it and that in 2006 he became a "proponent of clean cycling," adding, "I apologize to those I deceived … I will work hard to regain people's trust."

It would have been unthinkable to see such confessions made public even just weeks ago -- before USADA's case against Armstrong.

The USADA document released Wednesday, formally called a "reasoned decision," runs to more than 200 pages. It will be further dissected, and appropriately, in the days and weeks to come.

What matters most is that it's out there. As it says on page five: "It is important that facts relating to doping not be hidden from public view so that there is confidence in case outcomes and sport can learn from each case."