Callum Smith admitted his Winter Olympic debut was tough going after placing 62nd in the 30km cross-country skiathlon in Sochi.
Smith, the fifth youngest skier in the 68-strong field, clocked a time of 1:17:37.1 hours to finish 62nd in his first ever Olympic race.
Switzerland’s world champion Dario Cologna went over nine minutes quicker to win gold and Smith insisted it was not easy on his part.
“My race was pretty tough. It was OK but maybe not my best performance ever. I started off pretty hard and I think maybe that was a little bit of a mistake,” he said.
“I was therefore pretty tired for the last 10km. I was just trying to stick with the leaders for as long as I could.
“I was isolated for a while but I don’t think that makes it harder. You can ski at your own rhythm a bit, it was a pretty tough field as well.
“The selection to get into this race is pretty hard, a lot of the smaller nations don’t even compete. Even not to be at the back you have got to do reasonably well.”
© Sportsbeat 2014