Silje Norendal (NOR) announces retirement
Dec 15, 2020·Snowboard Park & Pipe
With Utah 2019 slopestyle world championships silver, Sierra Nevada 2017 big air world champs bronze, eight World Cup podiums, and four X Games wins, Norway's snowboard queen Silje Norendal is ready for a new chapter outside the of competition.
"I am ready for new challenges, and look forward to starting a new chapter," said Norendal via an announcement on the Norwegian federation's website.
The 27 year-old has been at the forefront of the snowboard world for over a decade, and is the Norwegian snowboarder with the most X Games gold, with wins in Tinges in 2013, Aspen in 2014 and 2015, and not least at home in 2017. At the final World Cup competition of her career last season in Calgary she finished second in slopestyle, while her lone World Cup win came at the 2019 Laax Open.
Now she'll be looking to new opportunities outside of the competition arena.
During practice at the US Open in February, she suffered a complicated fracture in her leg . Despite good progress in her rehabilitation from that injury, she has now decided to go in a different direction, hinting at some news to be revealed in the near future.
"I will miss the team and the trips around the world," Norendal went on, "The national team is an insanely nice bunch, who I've had a lot of fun with. I have no plans to disappear from winter sports and have a lot of exciting things going on."
The Kongsberg native entered her first World Cup competition back in 2009, but was already making her way onto the international scene in 2007 as a 14 year-old. Since then, she has been a role model for snowboarders in Norway and around the world, including with her involvement in the Silvergirls girls snowboard club in her hometown.
"I have had very talented people around me throughout my career, from a young age," said Norendal, "My mother has always been there for me, and I have had fantastic coaches in Sondre Hylland and Per Iver Grimsrud who have followed me from junior national teams, NTG and on the national team in recent years. Without these people, I would not have had the career I can look back on."
