The promised second-run charge might not have materialised, but Dave Ryding could still lay claim to achieving Great Britain's best Olympic alpine skiing result in 30 years.
An outside chance for a medal in the men's slalom after climbing the World Cup podium last season, Ryding had it all to do in here after he found himself down in 13th place following his first run.
The man, dubbed "The Rocket", claimed he had plenty of fuel still left in the tank and would go all out attack for his second run.
But he was unable to light the touch paper, with mistakes seeing him actually clock a slower time as he eventually finished in ninth with a combined time of 1:40.16.
There was no shame in the result though – despite the 31-year-old's hopes for better – as he recorded the best British finish since Martin Bell's eighth in the downhill at Calgary 1988.
And he was already targeting better at a potential fourth Olympics at Beijing 2022.
“After the dust settles I'm sure I'll be pretty proud of a top-ten finish at the Olympics and in four years' time have something to really build on,” he said.
“I had a couple of mistakes there that were a bit costly but I'm not sure everybody did, because the Olympics always give you a bit of the yips.
Ryding will be 35 by the time of the next Games but he was taking inspiration from new champion Andre Myhrer of Sweden.
“Myhrer is 35 and the last winner Mario Matt was also 35 and at the next Olympics I'm 35 so I'll try to keep that trend going.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here