And yet, Miller seemed in great shape for his first Olympic gold — he took two silvers at Salt Lake City — after a glistening downhill and what appeared to be a good-enough-to-still-lead opening slalom.

It turned out not to be.

As a replay showed, Miller failed to negotiate a gate two-thirds of the way down the slalom and was bounced from the competition half an hour later. Nothing new there: Since winning a World Cup slalom on this very same hill in December 2004, Miller has failed to finish 11 of 14 slaloms.

“I don’t really intend to get that disappointed,” Miller said, then managed to make a joke: “I mean, at least I don’t have to go all the way down to Torino tomorrow” for the medal ceremony.

Ligety, of course, will gladly take that 90-minute ride down from the Alps.   He was sitting with Miller in the rest area when word came that the man with the Nike deal, the satellite radio show and overall World Cup title was done for the day.

“He was like, ‘Are you serious?’ I was pretty bummed for him,” said Ligety, who becomes the favorite for gold in the slalom Feb. 25.

Heady stuff for a guy who wasn’t on the elite local ski team as a kid, didn’t crack the U.S. Ski Team lineup until two years ago and joined the World Cup circuit just last season.

When he was 10, Ligety started writing down his skiing goals, and didn’t exactly aim low.

“The coaches kept saying, ’Set smaller goals. You can’t win an Olympics this year,”’ his mother, Cyndi Sharp, said at Beaver Creek.

For a half-dozen years, his parents — Dad’s in real estate, Mom sells pottery and jewelry — pumped what Sharp called “a bloody fortune” into Ted’s career. That’s why, when Ligety still had no agent and no outside sponsor, he raced with a helmet decal reading “Mom and Dad.”

Despite his lack of big-time experience, Ligety is cool and confident, by all accounts. He was wisecracking with a coach right before locking into the starting gate. Maybe that’s why he was able to ski such a close, risky line on an icy hill that was bedeviling others.

“I have no idea how this will change my life,” Ligety said. “I’m pretty satisfied with my life so far, so I hope it doesn’t change too much.”

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