Svindal: “You have to tough it out in January”

In 2017/18, Svindal completed a season for the first time in three years - albeit in pain - and was crowned Olympic downhill champion in South Korea. His reward for the previous torment: In October 2014, he tore his Achilles tendon in a soccer game and was out for a year. In 2016 he won the Super-G in Kitzbühel in January, the next day he fell on the downhill and tore the anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus in his right knee. In 2017 he canceled the season in Wengen due to another knee operation.

Preparation for the current season went better than expected, but just before the opening races overseas he tore a complicated ligament in his thumb and had surgery in Vail. In terms of sport, things still went well; in the first six races - downhill and super-G in Lake Louise, Beaver Creek and Val Gardena - he finished in the top eight and won the Val Gardena Super-G. In Bormio, however, he had to be content with places 12 and 17.

“I gave my knee a rest” Bormio had demanded everything from his body. “Everything up until Bormio was much better than expected. “The way it happened afterwards was actually to be expected,” he looked at it realistically. The conditions in Bormio were anything but conducive to the knee, even if something like that could be expected at World Cup level. “I gave my knee a rest, cycled a lot and did physio. The knee is doing well,” said the 36-year-old on Wednesday after the first training session in Wengen, in which he finished sixth with a goal error.

“It was okay, but not really good. The snow conditions were variable and difficult to find balance. But if you look at Beat, it's apparently not impossible to find a balance.” The Swiss Beat Feuz had set a clear best time.

With Wengen, Kitzbühel, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the World Cup in Aare, the toughest four weeks of the year await. “In January you have to be in shape and fight through it,” says Svindal.

He was very happy about being honored in his homeland, as he had also beaten the Norwegian cross-country skiing stars who had won big at the Winter Games. “That was cool, it came as a big surprise to me. It’s cool to see that people at home also appreciate when someone becomes an Olympic downhill champion.”

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Svindal: “You have to tough it out in January”

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