India's one in a billion Arif Khan to ski at Milano Cortina 2026? "I'll have to ask my (future) wife"

Arif Khan was India's sole representative at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games competing in alpine ski and just getting there was pretty impressive in itself.

Now he has new dreams including marrying his fiancee after they put the wedding on hold so Khan could chase his Olympic dream.

How did she feel about that?

"She was really surprised," India's star skier tells Olympics.com, "she said, 'you made the right choice, the right decision and now it's all yours.'"

Support from her and hundreds of thousands of people back home have helped him feel like he achieved everything he set out to in Beijing.

"This is the best part of the journey... being an Olympian... my dreams have come true."

So now is he going straight from the Beijing slopes to the wedding ceremony?

"No, we will have to wait for the summer because I live in a place which is very beautiful... mountains, rivers, lakes... but now it's winter, it's snow.

"So we will have to wait until the summer when there are flowers blooming and we'll decide the dates for the wedding, for sure."

The Kashmir skier can see the soaring 8,000m peak of Nanga Parbat - part of the Himalayas - from his home in India's far north, and grew up with a love for the mountains.

His father Yasin Khan owns a ski equipment shop in Gulmarg and has been conducting skiing and trekking tours since the 1980s.

Arif tagged along from the age of four and went from there all the way to the Olympic stage.

While a medal was never really a genuine goal - Khan DNFed (Did Not Finish) the slalom and finished 45th in the giant slalom - this was about much more than medals.

"Having the vision of representing 1.4 billion people.... when I was the only one who got through there were tears dropping that moment...