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Ted Ligety's company website goes down after he wins gold

Graham Watson

Ted Ligety might have anticipated winning the gold medal in giant slalom on Wednesday – he was, after all, the favorite – but he didn’t know the affect it would have on his company’s website.

Within minutes of Ligety’s gold-medal win in, Ligety’s website, Shred Optics, was overloaded and subsequently crashed. The site was down most of Wednesday.

[Video: Find out how parents helped Ted Ligety win]

Ligety started Shred after winning gold during the 2006 Turin Olympics. The ski equipment company specializes in helmets, sunglasses, goggles and apparel. Ligety designs all of the merchandise and wears it while he competes.

He’s his own best billboard.

So when he completed his run in 1:24.21 to claim gold, it appears many people flocked to his site to get the Olympic gold medalist's gear and were turned away with a “500 Internal Server Error” page.

Here’s what the webpage usually looks like:

And here’s what it looked like after Ligety won gold:

It’s unfortunate that Ligety’s website wasn’t able to handle the immediate traffic, but that probably won’t deter people too much from grabbing gear when the site does come back up.

Thanks to Business Insider

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Graham Watson

is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter!