Dave Ryding
David Ryding is an English World Cup alpine ski racer who specialises in slalom. Widely considered to be the greatest British skier of all time, he has competed for Great Britain in four Olympics, seven World Championships, and won the Europa Cup Slalom Series in 2013. Ryding's best World Cup result was a victory in the 2022 Kitzbühel slalom, the first victory for any British athlete at that level in Alpine skiing.
Early life
Ryding grew up in Bretherton, Lancashire and attended Runshaw College and Bishop Rawstorne Church of England AcademyCareer
Early career
Born in Bretherton, Lancashire, England, Ryding started competing on dry ski slopes at age eight, first skied on snow at twelve, and continued racing on dry slopes until age 21. He began skiing at Pendle Ski Club.Ryding started competing on the Europa Cup from the 2007-08 season, and made his World Cup debut in a slalom race in Alta Badia in December 2009.
He won his first British national senior title in 2008, defeating Alain Baxter, who was competing in his final British championships and whom Ryding described as his role model during his teenage years. He has since gone on to win eight British Championship slalom titles.
Ryding competed for Great Britain at the 2010 Winter Olympics in giant slalom, in which he finished 47th, and in slalom, in which he finished 27th.
After the 2010 Olympics, he started working with coach Tristan Glasse-Davies, who remained as Ryding's coach until 2024, when Glasse-Davies moved to coach the US ski team's slalom squad. Glasse-Davies suggested after the 2010 Olympics that Ryding should work on his technique by training in indoor snow parks.
2013 season
Ryding scored his first ever World Cup points in the opening slalom race of the 2013 season, finishing 26th place in Levi, Finland in November 2012. This was his only points-scoring race of the season. He also raced in the Europa Cup, considered the second tier of global ski racing, throughout the season, and won the season-long slalom title after finishing ninth in the final race of the season in Kranjska Gora. This made Ryding the first British skier in history to win a title in the Europa Cup.2014 season
Ryding continued to race frequently in the World Cup and Europa Cup throughout the 2014 season, but failed to score any points in the former.He competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, finishing 17th in the slalom at Rosa Khutor. This was the highest finish for a British alpine skier at the 2014 Olympics, but Ryding was "frustrated" after the race, as he felt an error on the second run cost him a higher finish. Following the Games, Glasse-Davies diagnosed that Ryding's technique on left-footed turns needed to be improved: through technical training and repetitive exercise they broke down and rebuilt his left-footed technique.
2015 season
The 2015 World Cup season would prove to be Ryding's breakthrough year on the World Cup circuit. He scored his second World Cup points finish in a slalom race in Åre in December 2014, finishing 17th – the best World Cup result for a British alpine skier since Chemmy Alcott finished 17th in Garmisch in March 2010.Ryding followed this up with a 16th place in the Madonna di Campiglio slalom later that month, and three further top 30 finishes in the classic slalom races in Adelboden, Wengen and Schladming slaloms in January 2015. Ryding finished the 2015 season in 30th place in the slalom standings.
2016 season
Ryding started his campaign in the 2016 season with a 12th place finish at the opening slalom race of the season in Val-d'Isère in December 2015, his highest ever finish in the World Cup at the time. Ryding went on to qualify for the second run in every World Cup slalom race of the season and scored points in nine of the ten slalom races in 2016.Consequently, Ryding became the fourth Briton in World Cup history to qualify for the World Cup Finals, after Alain Baxter, Finlay Mickel and Alcott. He finished 15th in the final race of the season in St. Moritz, and ended the season in 22nd in the World Cup slalom standings.
2017 season
Ryding opened his 2017 season with a sixth place finish in the first slalom race of the World Cup season in Levi in November 2016, after finishing fourth on the first run. This was his first ever top ten finish in a World Cup race, and the best result for a British alpine ski racer since Alain Baxter's fourth place in Åre in 2001. Ryding backed this up with two further top 20 finishes in Val-d'Isère and Madonna di Campiglio in December and a seventh place finish in Zagreb in January 2017, his second top ten in the World Cup. He also finished in the top 15 in Adelboden and Wengen in January.On 22 January, Ryding took his first ever World Cup podium in the Hahnenkamm slalom in Kitzbühel, after leading the first run, finishing behind Austrian Marcel Hirscher and ahead of his training partner Aleksandr Khoroshilov, who finished third. He became only the second British man to finish on the podium in a World Cup ski race, after Konrad Bartelski, and only the fourth Briton to take a World Cup podium in history. In an interview later that year, Ryding said that as he had never completed two runs at Kitzbühel, he had engaged in extensive video analysis of Fritz Dopfer's fastest first run in the previous year's Hahnenkamm slalom ahead of the race, watching it "70 times at least" to observe how Dopfer adapted to the piste's terrain changes.
In February, Ryding finished 11th in the slalom at the 2017 World Championships in St. Moritz, the best result for a British skier at a World Championships since Finlay Mickel in 2005. Ryding had finished fourth after the first run, raising hopes of becoming the first British man to stand on a World Championship podium, but slipped down the standings on his second run.
Ryding finished in the points in three of the remaining four World Cup races for the 2017 season, with a DNF in Kranjska Gora his only non-points scoring race. This included a fourth-place finish in the parallel slalom city event in Stockholm just before the World Championships, his first ever World Cup parallel event, missing the podium by just 0.06 of a second behind Sweden's Mattias Hargin in the small final. Consequently, he finished the season in eighth place in the World Cup slalom standings, his highest ever finish at the time.
2018 season
Ryding began his 2018 season at the opening slalom race of the World Cup in Levi in November 2017, and led the race after the first run. In the second run, he extended his lead from 0.14 to 0.51 seconds, before hitting a rut and missing a gate within sight of the finish, missing out on his first ever World Cup win.Ryding took his first points in the season in Val-d'Isère in December, but was disappointed with his 19th place finish in a race that was affected by heavy snowfall. He took his first top 10 finish of the season in the pre-Christmas slalom in Madonna di Campiglio, finishing sixth.
Ryding competed in a parallel slalom in Oslo on New Year's Day 2018, where he repeated his fourth place finish from Stockholm the previous season, which would prove to be his highest finish of the season. Ryding's run to the semi-finals included knocking out overall World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher in the quarter-finals. However, he crashed out in his semi-final against Michael Matt and was beaten by Linus Strasser in the small final.
In the run of classic slalom races in January 2018, Ryding finished 12th in Adelboden, but crashed out on the first run in Wengen. In the race in Kitzbühel where he had finished on the podium 12 months prior, Ryding struggled in the first run, placing 25th, but set the fastest time on the second run to climb up to ninth place. He ended the month with a 12th place in Schladming before the Olympics.
Ryding competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyongchang, South Korea in the slalom, and was heavily touted as a potential British medal contender, including by former ski racer and pundit Graham Bell, with hopes of becoming Britain's first Olympic alpine skiing medallist. Ryding finished the first run of the slalom in 13th place, before moving up to finish ninth after the second run, exactly half a second outside of the medals. This was the best Olympic result for a British alpine skier since Martin Bell's eighth place in the men's downhill in 1988.
He went on the finish the season 11th in the World Cup slalom standings, closing his season with a top 20 finish in Kranjska Gora in March after the World Cup finals were cancelled due to high winds.
2019 season
Ryding opened his season with a 12th place finish in the first slalom World Cup race of the season in Levi in November 2018, followed by 23rd in Saalbach in December. He took one of the best World Cup results of his career so far in the slalom in Madonna di Campiglio later that month; after placing 27th in the first run, he set the fastest second run to finish fourth.Ryding's good form continued at the parallel slalom in Oslo on New Year's Day 2019, where he yet again knocked out Hirscher in the quarter-finals for the second year running, before defeating reigning Olympic slalom champion André Myhrer in the semi-finals. He lost out in the final to Marco Schwarz after missing a gate, but his second place equalled his career best World Cup result from 2017. He followed this up with two further slalom top ten finishes in Wengen and Schladming later that month.
At the 2019 Alpine World Ski Championships in Åre, Ryding took his best ever World Championship result, finishing ninth in the slalom and setting the third-fastest time on the second run. He placed ninth in the slalom World Cup standings for the 2019 season, having scored points in all but one of the season's 11 slalom races.