Career
Through November 2012, Svindal has won six World Championship medals, three Olympic medals, five World Cup discipline titles (in combined, super-G, and giant slalom), and 18 World Cup races. Additionally, he won four medals at the 2002 World Junior Championships, including gold in combined. He won his first overall World Cup title in 2007.
On November 27, 2007, during the first training run for the Birds of Prey downhill race in Beaver Creek, USA, Svindal crashed badly after landing a jump. He somersaulted into a safety fence and was taken to Vail Valley Medical Center with broken bones in his face and a six inch (15 cm) laceration to his groin and abdominal area. He missed the remainder of the 2008 season, and returned to World Cup racing in October 2008. His first two victories following his return were a downhill and a super-G in Beaver Creek, on the same Birds of Prey course where he was injured the year before.
At the 2009 World Championships, Svindal won the gold in the Super Combined. Fulfilling his comeback during the 2009 season, Svindal won his second overall World Cup over Benjamin Raich of Austria. Entering the last race of the season, a slalom at the World Cup finals in Åre, Sweden, Svindal led Raich by just two points. They had won the two previous races (a downhill and giant slalom respectively), with Svindal leading but Raich was the favorite as a specialist in slalom. Both skiers went off course and did not finish the slalom, so the Norwegian became the overall World Cup winner. He also won his fourth discipline title, his second in super G.
At the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 15, Svindal won the silver medal in the downhill competition in Whistler, 0.07 seconds behind the winner, Didier Défago of Switzerland, and 0.02 seconds ahead of bronze medalist Bode Miller of the United States. Svindal's medal was Norway's hundredth silver medal at the Winter Olympic Games, making Norway the first nation to win 100 silver medals at the Winter Olympics.
Four days later on February 19, Svindal won the Super-G competition, his first ever Olympic gold medal – ahead of Americans Bode Miller (+ 0.28 seconds) and Andrew Weibrecht (+ 0.31 seconds).
Svindal successfully defended his World Championship in the Super Combined in 2011 in Garmish-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Read more about this topic: Aksel Lund Svindal
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