When extreme skier and downhill racing champ Aksel Lund Svindal tore his Achilles tendon playing soccer last year, he did not sit around and mope about missing an entire season of skiing. Instead, he went to Silicon Valley.
"In any situation that's a bad situation, you want to try to flip it into something positive, right?" Svindal said, according to CNN.
Svindal had initially wanted to attend college. After the timing didn't work out, he picked his next option.
"I was like, 'What's the second-smartest thing I can do?' The most inspiring, I figured, would be to go somewhere where you meet fun and inspiring people, where people are really good and enthusiastic about something else than sports," Svindal said.
So, Svindal checked into a California rehab program and made good on a handful of contacts he had acquired.
He did not remain idle, as he soon invested in a Swiss start-up called Skioo, a mobile platform and app that offers a universal lift ticket for ski resorts in the Alps.
Svindal was back on snow by January. Amazingly, he competed in the February World Championships in Beaver Creek, finishing sixth in both the downhill and the super-G.
"It was a fun challenge trying to make it back for the World Championships in Vail, even though I didn't get a medal," said Svindal, according to The New York Times, "But it was a challenge in and of itself to prove everyone wrong and see if I could make it back in less than three months."
He currently leads the overall World Cup standings, trailed closely by Marcel Hirscher.
"When I tore my Achilles the worlds were just three months away, and three months is when I could maybe start skiing," he said. "It was probably borderline. The doctor didn't say yes, he didn't say no - he was definitely skeptical."
Svindal has also had success as an extreme skier and has appeared in several films.
