SKIING

Two-time Olympic champion Ted Ligety plans to retire from World Cup ski racing after the world championships.

Ligety’s final race will be the giant slalom on Feb. 19 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Known for his smooth, technical racing, Ligety won a surprise gold medal in the combined at the 2006 Turin Olympics and another gold medal eight years later in the giant slalom at the Sochi Games as the favorite. His storied career also includes five wins at world championships, 25 World Cup victories and five season-long World Cup giant slalom titles. Ligety’s dominance in the giant slalom once led Austrian skiing great Marcel Hirscher to pronounce him “Mr. GS.”

The retirement plans of the 36-year-old Ligety include spending more time with his family at home in Park City, Utah. He and his wife, Mia, have a nearly 4-year-old son along with twin boys, who are 7 months old.

Ligety began his World Cup career on Nov. 22, 2003, with a giant slalom race in Park City. He didn’t qualify for a second run in an event won by Bode Miller.

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Over his career, Ligety has made 336 World Cup starts and finished on the podium 52 times spanning all disciplines. That all-around versatility has long been a point of pride for Ligety, who started skiing at 2 and racing by 11.

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP: Mikaela Shiffrin’s year-long break from super-G racing has been extended for at least two more days.

Bad weather wiped out the super-G at the Alpine skiing world championships on Tuesday as a persistent fog bank limited visibility on the top half of the Olympia delle Trofane course. The FIS rescheduled the event for Thursday, further tightening the schedule at the worlds after all races on the opening three days have been postponed.

For Shiffrin, the 2019 world champion, it would have been her first race in the discipline since January last year when she won a World Cup super-G in Bulgaria and took a 10-month break from racing the following week. After inspecting the course, Shiffrin said she felt confident despite the lack of recent race experience in super-G.

“For sure I’m missing going out of a race start,” the American said. “I want to ski well, I have a good plan, and I want to execute my plan and forget about everything else.”

GOLF

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SORENSTAM TO PLAY: More than a decade after Annika Sorenstam won her last LPGA Tour event, she’s ready to tee it up again.

The LPGA Tour announced on Twitter the 50-year-old Sorenstam has committed to play the Gainbridge LPGA in Orlando, Florida, scheduled for Feb. 25-28 on her home course of Lake Nona.

It will be her first official event since she missed the cut in the season-ending ADT Championship at Trump International in 2008, her final season of a Hall of Fame career that included 72 wins on the LPGA Tour and 10 majors. Her last victory was the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill in 2008, and a month later she announced she was retiring.

Sorenstam recently played the PNC Challenge in December with her father, Tom. She said then her son was starting to play and motivating her to get back on the golf course. Sorenstam had said she was interested in a few senior events but did not hint at playing an official LPGA event.

She was part of the celebrity field at the season-opening Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions last month.

PEBBLE BEACH: Fresh off his victory in Saudi Arabia, Dustin Johnson decided Tuesday to withdraw from the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, leaving the tournament without a player from the top 10 in the world ranking.

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Johnson is a two-time winner at Pebble Beach. He typically plays with his de facto father-in-law, hockey great Wayne Gretzky, except that amateurs are not in the field this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson has played the Saudi International and Pebble Beach in consecutive weeks each of the last two years, and this was the second time he has won in Saudi Arabia.

His manager, David Winkle at Hambric Sports Management, said the world’s No. 1 player decided he would be better off enjoying a week at home before going to Los Angeles for the Genesis Invitational at Riviera. The following week, he is scheduled to play a World Golf Championships event on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

• Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington has tested positive for the coronavirus and has withdrawn from the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Harrington missed the cut last week at the Phoenix Open, ending his streak of seven consecutive cuts made worldwide.

The Irishman is the fifth player this year in six PGA Tour events who had to withdraw because of a positive test. That includes Jim Herman, who tested positive in Florida and did not finish his self-isolation in time to travel to Maui for the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

BASKETBALL

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WNBA: Atlanta Dream guard Renee Montgomery is retiring following an 11-year career with four teams that included two WNBA championships.

Montgomery is in her first season as a studio analyst on Atlanta Hawks broadcasts for Fox Sports Southeast. She opted out of the 2020 WNBA season to focus on social justice reforms.

Montgomery, 34, won titles with the Minnesota Lynx in 2015 and 2017. She was an All-Star with the Connecticut Sun in 2011, when she set a career high with her average of 14.6 points per game. She was the WNBA’s Sixth Woman of the Year in 2012.

Montgomery played her final two seasons with Atlanta. She helped lead the 2018 team to a franchise-record 23 regular-season wins.

Montgomery, who went to UConn, was the No. 4 overall pick by Minnesota in the 2009 WNBA draft. Her 532 career 3-pointers rank 12th all time in the WNBA. She also played for the Seattle Storm.


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