Faster, higher, stronger: The Olympic spirit is still filling the determined soul of Kristi Richards.

The Pemberton-based moguls skier, the 2007 world champion and nine-time World Cup medallist, wants to keep pushing her own skiing, and her sport, into new dimensions of speed, skill and soaring jumps.

So she announced last week that she intends to keep going for another four years of athletic effort and excellence, in pursuit of a third Olympic appearance at Sochi in 2014.

“I feel like I haven’t reached my full potential yet,” Richards said on Friday (July 23), as she started in on another day of summer training on Blackcomb Mountain. She has opened a door, and she plans to sail right through and keep on going.

In the lead-up to the 2010 Games, Richards pushed herself to new levels of speed and height, stepping up her skiing and overcoming fears and demons to add a full-twisting back flip (known as a back full) to her arsenal of tricks. She opened the World Cup season with two huge performances in back-to-back events, landing gold and silver medals to showcase her gains and set herself up for an Olympic spot.

On the slopes of Cypress Mountain, with the frigid February rain pounding down, Richards qualified fourth for the Olympic women’s moguls final, but then took a tumble in her final run. Skiing faster than she ever had, she got caught in the slushy snow and crashed.

But her 2010 Olympic moment wasn’t quite over. Regrouping while the crowd roared, Richards pulled herself and her gear together after that fall to finish her run with an enormous back full, the jump that she had worked so hard to master. She finished 20th in the standings, but make a mark on many hearts with her boundary-pushing jump.

Richards had originally envisioned skiing toward the 2011 world championships and then retiring. But a conversation with her coach helped crystallize her thinking as she realized she hasn’t yet reached her full potential.

As an athlete, he said, Richards goes to the gym, eats healthy and trains hard on her skis.

“If you weren’t skiing, would anything change?” he asked. Richards realized the answer was no — and there was no reason for her to stop competing if she still loved it and would still be following that lifestyle anyway.

“She has in no way reached her peak. She’s still continuing to improve every training camp,” coach Stephen Fearing said in a statement last week.

By the time Sochi rolls around, Richards should have even more experience under her belt of skiing at in the faster, more technical way that she has sought, with even bigger jumps.

At Cypress, she said, “I was skiing at my best, but I hadn’t had enough experience skiing at that level.”

After overcoming many fears and doubts to master the back full, which no woman had landed before in competition, Richards said it’s definitely staying in her package of jumps — and she’s aiming to go even bigger.

In Friday’s training session, Richards was planning to work on her D-spin, the spinning, inverted trick invented by Whistler freeskiing legend Mike Douglas. She wants to add it to the arsenal.

Richards will be 32 when the Sochi Olympics roll around, and she knows she’ll need to be diligent in taking care of her body over the next four years: “I’ll just have to train a lot smarter,” she said. But she’s also going to have much more maturity as an athlete to bring to bear.

Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, noted in a statement that female freestyle skiers who have risen through the ranks have historically been able to keep up their careers for longer than their male counterparts. Examples of sustained excellence include Donna Weinbrecht of the U.S., who won her fifth FIS Crystal Globe at age 31, and Norway’s Kari Traa, a three-time Olympic medallist who won silver in Torino at age 32.

“Richards is in a prime position and she’s proven that she’s willing to work hard. And, she has the maturity that will give her an edge. Next time around the stars might just align for her,” Judge said in a statement.