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U.S. Ski Team - 2008 - A Season To Remember

By Mike Doyle, About.com

There's no doubt the 2007-08 season was one for the books for the U.S. Ski Team - including six victories by the disabled team. U.S. athletes scored 29 victories and stood on 92 podiums across all six ski sports.

Overall, the most notable results include five alpine World Cup titles by three different Americans - Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller, and Ted Ligety. We also saw the first women's cross country World Cup win by Kikkan Randall and the best American nordic combined ranking by Bill Demong who ranked third in the World Cup standings.

Here's a review of the highlights in each discipline.

Alpine

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American skiers captured five of 12 World Cup titles; no other country won more than two titles. Seven different U.S. athletes were responsible for 37 World Cup podiums.

Lindsey Vonn - six wins and 10 podiums and only the second U.S. woman to win both the downhill and overall World Cup titles.

Ted Ligety - two wins and 6 podiums, GS champion, and he never placed lower than fifth in all the giant slalom races he finished.

Bode Miller - who trains independently from the U.S. Team, took the Super Combined and overall World Cup title. Miller joined Vonn as the first American duo to win overalls since 1983.

Cross Country

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A World cup win by an American woman - unheard of, and probably unthought of not too long ago. But,in December, Kikkan Randall became the first U.S. woman in the 27-year history of cross country World Cup skiing to attain a victory when she won the Rybinsk, Russia sprint event. How big was that win for the U.S.? Well it was the first U.S. victory since Bill Koch in 1983.

Andy Newell took to the podium for the men with a second place in March.

Free Style

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Six wins by six athletes, but, 12 different athletes collected 24 podiums in the four freestyle disciplines - moguls, aerials, ski cross, and skier halfpipe.

First time wins by veterans - Shelly Robertson and Emiko Torito in moguls, and Emily Cook in aerials.

First time podiums - Kayla Snyderman, Landon Gardner and World Cup Rookie of the Year Pat Deneen in moguls and alpine veteran turned ski cross racer Casey Puckett.

Nordic Combined

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Bill Demong finished the season third in the World Cup overall standings, the best ranking for an American in the history of the sport.

The Team totaled seven podiums - six by Demong, including a win, and a second by Johnny Spillane.

Ski Jumping

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The U.S. Women's Ski Jumping Team was led by Lindsey Van who had four second place finishes on the Continental Cup tour including back-to-back podiums in 24 hours.

Jessica Jerome added a third place in Japan.

Disabled

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The U.S. Disabled Ski Team collected 22 podiums including six wins - five in alpine and one in cross country.

Paralympic champion Chris Devlin-Young (sit-ski) won the super G title and finished third in the GS and super combined with a total of nine podiums including four wins.

Chris Klebl (sit-ski) had two cross country podiums and finished the season fourth in the overall standings.

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