Alpine skiing-The Rocket's last launch: Ryding all in for Olympic farewell

BORMIO, Italy, Feb 13 : For Britain's Dave Ryding there was no Plan B when he set off on an unlikely path to becoming a professional ski racer.

On Monday, his journey that began on the plastic slopes of Pendle Hill in the English town of Clitheroe as an eight-year-old who had never seen the Alps, will reach its climax in his fifth and final Olympics.

Long gone are the days when being beaten by "the British guy" was guaranteed to spark mockery among skiers from traditional Alpine nations.

Indeed, when the 39-year-old makes his Olympic bow in Monday's slalom, the man they call 'The Rocket' will line up with the respect of the world's elite racers he has battled for more than a decade

"So many kids came from wealthy families and they had a fallback option," a relaxed Ryding said on a sunny terrace at the Bormio hotel housing Britain's slalom squad on Friday.

"I didn't. It was a case of you either make this work or you walk away with an empty bank account at 30 years old and then go on with your life. I was willing to do that. I wasn't bothered about that. So that's how I managed to do it."

Ryding, who skied on snow for the first time at 12, admits a pro career looked unlikely when finishing 49th, 33 seconds behind the winner, in his first international race in 2002.

"I remember sitting in a high school class, thinking I'd love to go to one Olympics, and I'd love to be ranked in the top 30 in the world," Ryding said. "Looking at that you'd think, 'what's this guy thinking?'

"It was a matter of, yeah, right, I'm not very good at skiing, certainly in my first year of FIS races, but I knew how to apply myself, I knew how to race. I was in a much more long-term mindset of I'm going to do this."

His early forays on the World Cup were not