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Park City’s Ted Ligety misses the podium in combined, but still has his sights on a medal before he leaves Pyeongchang

(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) USA's Ted Ligety competes in the Men's Alpine Combined at Jeongseon Alpine Centre during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics Tuesday, February 13, 2018. Ligety finished in 5th place with a time of 2:07.97.

(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) USA's Ted Ligety competes in the Men's Alpine Combined at Jeongseon Alpine Centre during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics Tuesday, February 13, 2018. Ligety finished in 5th place with a time of 2:07.97.

Jeongseon, South Korea • It has been 12 years since Ted Ligety surprised the world by winning a gold medal in the combined in Torino, and much has changed for the Park City man since.

Ligety is still here, back at his fourth Olympic Games, despite a series of serious injuries and surgeries to fix his back and knee. But at 33 years old, the question now is whether Ligety can recapture the magic that has led him to two Olympic medals in his career.

He came close Tuesday, but not close enough. Ligety finished fifth in the men’s combined, 1.45 seconds behind gold medalist Marcel Hirscher of Austria.

“It’s good to always have a good race. It’s good to be able to go to bed happy with my performance,” Ligety said. “But I’m not super psyched on not ending with a medal.”

Ligety still has hopes of making a podium before he leaves Pyeongchang. He is scheduled to compete in the giant slalom and the super G, and U.S. Ski officials have hinted that he could race in the slalom as well.

Ligety put together a solid slalom run on Tuesday but it wasn’t enough to overcome his 27th-place position after the morning’s downhill.

Swirling, cold winds have caused problems for athletes at different events and venues over the first week of these Olympic Games, and they didn’t favor Ligety on Tuesday.

“Guys were 1 and 2 had good tailwinds and they ended up being the leaders with good downhill runs,” he said. “Other guys had headwinds. It’s just the reality of an outdoor sport. Not being on the lucky side of that definitely affects how you end up.”

A swirling wind also hurt Holladay’s Jared Goldberg, who committed to a risky race plan in hopes of making up time in his afternoon slalom run. Goldberg ended up making a mistake and losing control, finishing in 36th place after hiking back up and completing his run.

“I had a good downhill run. I’m really happy with that,” said Goldberg, who will compete in the full downhill event later this week. “It wasn’t the cleanest run but there are things I can do that I can clean up for the downhill race. It was like another good training run.”

Ligety said there was not much in a technical sense that he could take away from Tuesday’s race, as he prepares for his other events, but that a good performance “does help with your mindset.” With a third-place finish in last month’s World Cup even in Garmisch, Germany, and now a fifth-place effort to kick off the Olympics, Ligety hopes he’s peaking at the right time.