Saffron Walden's Billy Major has vowed to come back stronger after seeing his hopes of a high finish at the Winter Olympics smashed in Beijing.
The 25-year-old, a former pupil at Dame Bradbury's School, failed to finish in the men's slalom after missing a gate in the first run.
But he didn't spend too much time wallowing in self-pity after his error and wants to follow the example of training partner and GB number one Dave Ryding to come back better in four years time.
Major said: "It's a bit of a marker, seeing what Dave had to do to get where he is.
"It wasn't easy and it didn't come as fast as certain others. If you keep going and keep putting in the work, there's no reason why not.
"[Training with Ryding] is huge. You look at all these big ski nations and there's multiple reasons why they're so good.
"But once you get a collective group of people in the same frame of mind and really working hard, things can start to click and you get a positive spirit that everyone can feed off.
"He's laid down a route for British skiing that we can try and follow."
His run started in the best possible fashion, setting the fastest time at the first checkpoint, but in his head, it needed to be better and he ended it up pushing too hard, missing a gate within sight of the finishing gantry.
"I didn't feel like I got off to the best start," said Major. "I felt a little bit up against it and a little bit off with timing.
"Maybe I just had a bit of a feeling of needing to let it go coming onto this final section. I pushed it a bit too much and let the feet get away from me. I couldn't make the next gate.
"It's frustrating. Certain people see it as you have to finish to be in the race and to make it down.
"At the end of the day you need to finish but I was trying to push out there and show my best skiing. Unfortunately today it wasn't in the finish.
"I'm happy to have raced and tried to show my best skiing."
Ryding ended up 13th while France's Clement Noel took the gold ahead of Johannes Strolz of Austria and Norway's Sebastian Foss-Solevaag.
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