A French player, Sylvain Marconnet, broke his tibia skiing in 2007 and missed his home World Cup. For me the risk of breaking something versus the reward was never worth it.

I vary my days between skiing and snowboarding - I can go fast down pisted runs but still struggle in the bumps on a snowboard.

I started going on ski trips at senior school. I can't remember exactly where but we skied in the Tirol in Austria a couple of times and also went to Val d'Isère in France. When I was 15, rugby took over and there wasn't time to ski any more. I didn't ski again until I was 33.

Playing for England was a massive honour and when I was in the team, that was all I wanted to focus on.

Zara [Phillips] skis very well but is happy to take it easy around me. She will often wait for me when I'm on my snowboard but she can really whizz around if she needs to. I only snowboard if I'm on my own with Zara; if we're with other people who want to go a bit quicker, I will stick with skis.

In 2011 I stopped playing rugby for England so during the Six Nations, which is on during February and March, I was able to grab a week's skiing. But I still had to take it pretty easy because I didn't want to get injured while I was playing for Gloucester. In 2013, when I retired fully from rugby, I finally had the chance to go a couple of times a season.

With ski jumping I reached a plateau and the more I did it the worse I got.