VAIL — With an Olympic bronze medal from the 2006 Games, seven World Cup wins and three World Championship medals, including one gold, in hand, Vail freestyle skier and moguls specialist Toby Dawson announced his retirement

Monday.

Dawson, 27, had been mulling over ending his skiing career before this year’s Winter Games in Torino, Italy, and the combination of medaling in February along with a slew of injuries he sustained during the last three years with future personal and professional opportunities made the decision final.

“I kind of had the idea in my mind before the Olympic Games,” Dawson said. “My goal was to qualify and compete in the Olympics, and then I could feel like my career was fulfilled and step away.

“It’s been a little tough for me because of all the injuries I’ve been through. It seems like I’ve always been rehabbing. The last three years have been pretty tough in that aspect. It felt like it was the right time for me.”

World Cup wins and Olympic bronze

Dawson certainly picked an appropriate time to call it a career. He won his seventh World Cup event in Deer Valley, Utah, and then sprang onto the national scene by winning bronze in men’s moguls in Torino last winter.

Not only was an Olympic medal the culmination of a career, but it proved to be a validation for his career at the highest level after failing to qualify for the 2002 Games in Utah.

“It was just amazing because I’ve had so much community support throughout the years, and it was such a letdown not to qualify for the Salt Lake Games, and that was in our backyard,” Dawson said. “That also gave me a lot of motivation and energy to come back and prove it to my family and my community.

“I had so many people out at the Olympic Games to cheer me on. ... I think it’s every kid’s dream at some point to be able to compete in the Olympic Games, compete for their country, the U.S. To win a medal on top of that is like icing on the cake. For me, just to be able to run around and share it with other people really has made it more enjoyable for me.”

A graduate of Battle Mountain High School in 1997, Dawson secured his spot on the U.S. Freestyle Team during the 1998-99 season by finishing fifth at a World Cup event in Mont Tremblant, Quebec.

Podiums followed and he finally broke through in 2001 with his first circuit win in Himos, Finland. He returned to the top step two years later in Madonna, Italy.

The year 2003 was a breakout year of sorts for Dawson. In addition to his second World Cup win he took two bronze medals (moguls and dual moguls) at Worlds in Deer Valley, Utah.

From there, he became a fixture in freestyle, winning three times in the 2003-04 (Naeba and Inawashiro, Japan, and Deer Valley) followed by victories in Deer Valley (again) and Mont Tremblant the last two winters.

The final two years of his career likely saw his finest moments on snow. In addition to bronze at Torino, he took gold at the World Championships in dual moguls in Ruka, Finland.

“Everything from making the World Cup team and finishing fifth at Mont Tremblant has been an avalanche from there,” Dawson said. “I’ve qualified for World Championships every (time). I won a gold medal at the last World Championships. I’ve had a handful of World Cup victories. It felt like it’s been a full all-around career for me.”

Dawson had been planning to take the 2006-07 season off, but the mounting injuries of the last three years one of the reasons why he decided to retire

Monday.

He broke his right fibula and tore ligaments in that ankle a few years ago. In January 2005, he broke his foot during dryland training. Last summer he tore an MCL. In the process, Dawson accumulated frequent visitor points at the Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail.

“They know my face very well over there,” he said. “I love those guys, but I don’t want to see them every day.”

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’

The story of Dawson’s upbringing is well-known locally and came to international prominence after this year’s Olympics. He was born in South Korea and adopted by Debbie and Mike Dawson, local ski instructors, when he was 3.

His parents got Toby his first pair of skis when he was 4, and he was literally off to the races.

“I think just being outside, a lot of the speed and going through the trees, and then I found jumping, which was a thrill of a lifetime,” Dawson said. “To be able to throw your body into weird positions and land on your feet was pretty exciting.”

The result, however, was that Dawson would come home relatively regularly with newly broken pairs of planks, which at times, caused consternation for his parents.

“It was always (with my parents) the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy where we don’t really want to know what you were doing because it was going to worry us more.’ They always felt I needed some kind of supervision when I was trying something which they thought was a little dangerous.”

Dawson said he did his first backflip when he was 12 or 13, and he was hooked. He moved from alpine to freestyle around that time and started attending camps and competitions in what was then a new discipline in skiing.

“I was thinking that these are the aspects about skiing I love the most,” Dawson said. “This is a lot of fun to me. That sparked my curiosity and kept my interest throughout the years.”

And it gave birth to a glorious career.

The future

One unfortunate byproduct of winning bronze at Torino and the international acclaim which followed was that many South Koreans came forward, claiming to be Dawson’s biological parents. That form of publicity was understandably disturbing to Dawson.

Dawson said that he “needed to step away from it” after the Olympics. His cellular phone was ringing off the hook so much that he had to get a new number. Dawson said he wants to meet his biological parents, but he knows that it will be a time-consuming and difficult process.

Dawson said he was contemplating at trip to South Korea this winter.

“Mike and Debbie are always going to be my parents, and they are who I will call my parents,” he said. “I guess the best case scenario is that I’ll have another group that I can call friends and family. Other than that, my expectations aren’t that high.”

Dawson has a myriad of opportunities awaiting. His success at the Olympics has turned him into a reluctant but willing public speaker. He said he also has some possibilities in acting.

He’s also gotten into golf in a big way. What started as an exercise to increase his concentration has become a healthy obsession with the game.

“I kind of used it last summer as a way to prepare for the Olympic Games,” Dawson said. “What we do is such a quick 24 seconds. You only have to keep your concentration for a short period of time. I wanted to be able to stay competitive by doing a sport in my offtime and keep my mental game sharp. I felt like golf was the right thing for that because you have to keep your focus for four-and-a-half hours.”

Local golf pro Tom Apple of the Country Club of the Rockies took Dawson under his wing and the freestyler has cut his handicap from 20 to 10 this year. He will be joining the celebrity golf circuit as he continues to improve his game.

In the meantime, he, like many locals, is anticipating the snow in the next few months. While he says he’s definitely going to be on Prima, hitting the bumps like old times, it will be a strange winter for him not competing.

“There’s going to be a lot of emotion involved because I’ve put so much tears and sweat into where I’ve gotten,” Dawson said. “It’s definitely going to be tough, and it’s going to be something I have to get used to, watching my friends compete, watching my friends do well and knowing that I could still be there. But at this stage of my life, I guess the drive isn’t there like it was.”

Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 748-2934 or cfreud@vaildaily.com.

Vail, Colorado