RETIRED tennis star Andy Murray had to be rescued from a Swiss mountain top after a recent fall while skiing for the first time, he has revealed.
The Scot said he was excited to try skiing for the first time on a recent holiday – which his career had stopped him from doing for fear of injury.
Speaking on Sir Chris Hoy’s Sporting Misadventures podcast, the 37-year-old said he took on a three kilometre slope on the first day and fell after picking up too much speed.
He said: “I got stuck up the mountain at the end of the first day. We were on a beginner’s slope and my brother-in-law and I decided to go a little bit further.
“I can’t ski and I don’t know how to stop at this stage. The ski lift was shut and the guy said, ‘The only way to get down now is by going down the mountain.’ We asked him how far it was and he said it was about 3km to the bottom.
“I had no idea how to stop so I went for about 500 metres and I thought, ‘If I try to turn I’m going off the side here.’
“I was basically just going straight down the mountain. I went past my brother-in-law and I was shouting, ‘I’m in trouble here, I don’t know how to stop.’
“It is pretty scary when you are picking up speed and you don’t know how to stop. I threw myself on the ground and started trying to go down on my arse which I couldn’t really do.”
He added: “I had to get rescued on one of those Ski-Doos. The rescue team were snapping because usually it’s drunk British people at the end of the day that have got stuck up the mountain and that’s not really their job to rescue them.
“They are there to help people who have hurt themselves and are injured rather than just some idiot that thought they could get down the slope late in the day.
“That was a bit embarrassing.”
Murray recently took up a coaching role with Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open last month after retiring last summer.
