Athlete Bios
Alpine Skiing
Norway's Svindal hunts for 4 Olympic medals
Last Updated: Friday, February 5, 2010 | 12:22 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal is one of the best all-around skiers in the world and in history. (AFP/Getty Images)Aksel Lund Svindal won two of the last three overall World Cup championships, establishing himself as the best all-around skier in the world and one of the best in history. With a surge in recent years similar to that of American Lindsey Vonn on the women's side, Svindal, a Norwegian, will be a medal favourite in four events: downhill, super-G, giant slalom and combined.
Svindal, 28, reached his peak just after the 2006 Turin Games. Prior to Turin, in which he finished fifth in super-G and sixth in giant slalom (and was second in the combined after the downhill portion before falling in slalom), Svindal had one World Cup victory. He entered the 2009-10 season with 11 more.
But his was a case of career, interrupted. Svindal might have become the first skier since the American Phil Mahre in the early 1980s to win the overall World Cup title three years in a row if not for a serious accident in December 2007.
Svindal was the overall points leader when the tour reached Beaver Creek, Colo. During practice on the treacherous Birds of Prey course, Svindal crashed badly off a jump. He landed painfully on his back, then skidded out of control into a safety fence, a sequence that has enjoyed a long run as an online video favourite.
Svindal sustained a deep laceration on his buttocks from a ski. He also broke several bones in his face but somehow managed to avoid a serious leg or back injury, the downfall of so many skiers.
Still, Svindal spent most of the next month in hospitals in Colorado and Norway and missed the rest of the season.
He nervously returned to Beaver Creek the next year and won both the downhill and super-G events, trumpeting his full return to the elite. He went on to win the overall season title (as well as the overall super-G title) by the slimmest margin in history: two points over Austria's Benjamin Raich, a slalom and giant slalom specialist who won the 2006 overall title and the gold medal in both events in Turin.
Svindal, who grew up outside Oslo and whose mother died during childbirth when Svindal was eight (the baby also died), is the latest in a growing line of Norwegian alpine champions, among them Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Lasse Kjus.
A lower-leg injury slowed Svindal's start to the 2009-10 season. But if he is healthy, he will be the one to beat across several events at Whistler.
