ABERGAVENNY cyclist Julian Winn admitted after making his Olympic debut that he is now thinking of retiring from the sport.

The 31-year-old Winn pulled out of Saturday's Olympic road race championships after 10 laps when the Athens heat became too much for the exhausted cyclist.

And as Winn reflected on his Olympic debut, which he described as an "anti-climax" after the race, he admitted he is now planning for life after the sport.

"I'm getting to a phase in my career where I'm going to have to start looking at life after cycling," said an exhausted Winn.

"I've got to look to something else now and managing and coaching is an area that I'm interested in.

"I still want to race but trying to develop the Welsh lads and the Welsh system is something I'm definitely interested in doing very soon.

"I've waited a long time to compete in the Olympics and I was determined to enjoy it despite the pressure to do well and it has lived up to expectation but it is a shame it is all over. Now I will try and enjoy my last couple of days here."

The race was won by Italy's Paulo Bettini with Portugal's Sergio Paulinho second and Belgium's Axel Merckx third. Great Britain's Roger Hammond was seventh and as Winn admits, Saturday was all about supporting Hammond.

Winn said: "I had my job to do today and I had no self-plan, I wasn't riding for myself I was riding for Roger Hammond.

"I made sure he was in a good position for the whole of the race and once the winning movers were starting to go it was a case of looking after myself for the remainder of the race.

"But I wasn't strong enough anyway and I wasn't able to go with the main movers but I never expected to be. I was here to do a job and that's it really."

However, Winn admitted that he regretted not finishing the race. "I knew I would never win but the heat hit me very hard," he said. "I would have liked to have finished for my own personal pride as much as anything else because to finish 77th means nothing to me as that is what would have happened but I wasn't strong enough to do it.

"The heat was too much for everybody not just me, the drop out rate was pretty high compared to normal so that is just the way it is.

"We knew what to expect but couldn't do anything about it. I knew I would suffer in the heat, make no bones about it, but like I say my job was to look after Roger and not look after myself and that's what I was here for."