A former World Cup alpine ski racer from Norway, Aksel Lund Svindal has been hailed by many as the greatest Norwegian alpine skier ever. Svindal is unquestionably the most successful player on the World Cup circuit, though the great Kjetil Andre Aamodt has had more success at the Olympics. Svindal made the announcement that he would stop competing in alpine skiing after the 2019 Ski World Championships in late January 2019.

Svindal, who was born in Lrenskog in the county of Akershus, won the overall World Cup title twice (in 2007 and 2009), the downhill and super combined World Championships five times (in 2007, re, 2009, Val-d’Isère, 2011 and 2013), and two Olympic gold medals in super-G and downhill. Svindal became the first male alpine racer to win titles in four straight world championships with his downhill triumph in 2013.

Despite a decent start to the 2016–2017 season, which included one World Cup victory, he sustained a season-ending/interrupting injury for the third consecutive year, missing the remainder of the World Cup season as well as the 2017 World Alpine Ski Championships. He became the oldest Alpine skiing gold medalist when he won another Olympic gold in the downhill competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Svindal placed second in a Norwegian one-two in his final event, the downhill, at the 2019 World Alpine Ski Championships in February of that year. Teammate Kjetil Jansrud won by a margin of two hundredths of a second.