PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — At the World Cup races late last month, Marcel Hirscher of Austria told his longtime American rival Ted Ligety that he was planning to skip the Alpine combined event at the Winter Olympics.
Ligety laughed at Hirscher and told him he would see him at the race’s starting gate.
Hirscher, ski racing’s most dominant athlete since 2011, has had a tangled relationship with the Olympics. For all his many accomplishments, which include a record six consecutive World Cup overall titles and 55 World Cup victories, an Olympic gold medal had eluded him, an outcome that vexed him after two previous Olympic appearances.