Olympic skiing legend Dave Ryding hoping to stay in skiing as coach or mentor: 'I won't be racing in anger again'

Winter Olympian Dave Ryding reached the end of piste in Bormio on Monday as he placed 17th in the men's slalom in his fifth and final Games.

The 39-year-old, whose rose from a dry slope in Pendle to become the first Briton to win an alpine World Cup race at Kitzbuhel in 2022, finished one place behind his compatriot Billy Major.

Ryding emphatically rejected any notion of delaying his retirement and said he hoped his improbable rise to the top of his sport would serve as a blueprint for future generations of British alpine hopefuls.

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Ryding 'a unique figure within elite skiing'

When Ryding completed the men's Olympic slalom in Bormio his overriding emotion was relief.

Relief he'd gone down in one piece! The weather, snow and wind, has been pretty awful around the Olympic clusters of Bormio and Livigno so it made navigating an Olympic course even more challenging.

Ryding told Sky Sports: "Relief, I think! Yeah relief that I'd managed to get down that tricky course in the really tough conditions and just do myself proud, I wanted to finish as well as I could.

"I was really in the mindset to give it my all. I did these extra couple of years in my career just to give myself one last chance because I felt like I owed it to my younger self to just go until the bitter end.

"Obviously having the Olympics was a nice goal to have and yeah, I gave it absolutely everything that I could to cross the line and taking a lead was nice and actually I felt like I had a pretty decent second run, the first run was incredibly difficult and I didn't get it right."

Ryding has been a unique figure within elite skiing for 17 years. He's consistently remained among the elite and gained the respect of those from traditional powerhouse skiing nations. With over 30 top 10 World Cup finishes, seven podiums and of course winning perhaps the one race all skiers want outside of an Olympic title - Kitzbuhel. His win there in 2022 is the stuff of legend.

What now though? Ryding was open saying this would be his last season, but after the emotion and physical toll of preparing and racing at an Olympics, was that his last race?

"I just went all in until the Olympics. I said, just commit until that day and that's what I did. Now, I'm just letting myself just breathe a bit. If the Olympics happens to be my last race then it's a great way to bow out, a great place to do it. Certainly I'm not thinking about what I'm doing for training! I was thinking about going on the bike, but I told myself 'just give yourself one day where you don't do anything, Dave'!

"I won't be racing in anger. There's two World Cups left and you have to be in the top 25 to do the last one. Let's see if I stay in that or not, I more than likely won't be at the next one. I'm letting myself breathe."

I couldn't let Dave dangle that one out there, clearly tired after the Games and just arriving back to see his wife and daughter, but I asked one more question on whether he would call it a day, I said; 'I've never spoken to you like this before, this sounds to me like you're done?'

Ryding replied: "Without saying I'm done, I'm certainly not putting myself in a start gate and thinking how am I going to be the fastest in the world anymore?"

That sounds like he's done!

But what next for an athlete who has committed 17 years of his life to spending most of it living out of a bag and travelling around the race circuits?

"In my early 30s I did something really important and I ran a local cafe with my wife for four years. The biggest thing it taught me was I know way more about skiing than I do about real life! So 100 per cent I'll be staying involved in skiing and elite sport. It's my passion.

"It's what I've done, it's what I know most about and I've been working with a close friend to set up some sort of coaching and mentorship program that I can start with. Obviously my life now has been away a lot. I need to combine my future life with my family back in Lancashire."

Ryding has been incredibly popular part of Team GB and any British team he's represented. A huge Liverpool and football fan he knows the value of not taking elite sport too seriously.

"I think because as an athlete you're so caught up in performance, you're so caught up in, right, the next day, how am I going to be recovering? How am I going to prepare? What am I eating? Etc etc…

"I don't think I've really appreciated what I've done. I think now that my career is pretty much over or almost done, I think I will be able to sit back and just have a look at what I actually achieved. Even, for instance, the trophies behind me from Kitzbühel, I was racing two or three days later so I never really even took in that win as much as I probably should have.

"I think a lot of what I've done, I'll feel it a bit more over the coming months when I can actually sit back and just realize the journey that I was on and where I came from, where I went to.

"When you say, pointing across my humour I'm glad people have seen that because athletes we take everything so professional and to such minute detail, but I couldn't put on this other show. I just wanted to be myself as often as I could and I love having a laugh as much as anybody else does. I'm glad I was able to do that along the way because that's what makes it so much more enjoyable."