Postings for februar 2010 | Aksel Lund Svindal
Back in Norway
Pretty smooth travels from Vancouver via Toronto and Heathrow to get to Oslo. Feel like I’ve got the attention I need these past weeks, so I tried to sneak home. But that didn’t work. First sign was when I landed at the airport in Oslo and saw “Congrats Aksel” rolling over the electronic billboards. Some interviews and lots of nice people in the arrivals hall. My brother picked me up, we made tacos and now we’re watching the Olympics on Norwegian NRK. Biathlon relay. We’re gonna win this thing!
Checking out Vancouver
Went down to Vancouver yesterday. The hockey game between Russia and Canada was awesome. What a crowd! The Canadians played great and the enery in the stadium was unreal. So fun! It was Acer that set me up with great tickets and i did an presentation with them after the game. Perfect to have one of your personal sponsors as a world-wide IOC partner. This way your able to do something for them also during the games. Looks like a nice day in Vancouver today, checking out the city.
Attacking Vikings
Today we were the Attacking Vikings again. Me and Kjetil with Bronze and Silver. Awesome race, and so nice to have one of my team mates on the podium. The games have been awesome for me, and the rest of the team is so good at being happy together with me, so it great that Kjetil climbed up on the podium. I’m not gonna ski the slalom, so this is It for me. Don’t really have the words to describe how the games have been. Think I need some time alone to take it all in. Driving down to Vancouver tomorrow, and then flying over to Europe later. It’s been an adventure! Olympics rocks!!
Ready for Giant Slalom
It was good with an easy day today. Since every event got pushed back it has been a tight race schedule. I was starting to get very tired, but today was an easy day with just a couple of hours skiing. We did freeskiing on the race hill, and that was awful. Dark, bumpy and with different kinds of snow on the way down. Everything from soft to icy, from grippy to death-cookies. Death cookies are hard icy snowballs that the groomers make when they did a bad job on the hill or conditions makes it very hard to groom. They make it impossible to do good turns. But I’m sure it will be better tomorrow, And no matter what the hill looks like, I’m ready tom race again. Olympics have been great so far, and it can only get better!
You win some, you lose some...
Of course easy to say when you already have a gold medal, but that is how it is. And that is why it’s an advantage to be an all-rounder at big championships. I had a great downhill run and was leading before the slalom. In the slalom I heard Kostelic and Bode had great runs. I wanted to get after the gold, so attack was the only option. Except for two small mistakes it looked pretty good till I straddled 10 sec before the finish line. I was about two tens behind Bode, but he had made a mistake in the last turns, so the gold was still within reach… Thant sucks! But I have had amazing games so far, so I’m not gonna be bummed out for very long.