A Stalwart of the Alpine Skiing World Cup, it is strange to introduce the elite circuit without Dave Ryding. But at the end of the 2025-26 season, the veteran-Englishman will hang his skis. He will then be 39 – although if the previous season is something to pass, his younger competitors are still able to learn a few things.
“It was a fairly natural decision to make,” he says The independentFor today’s official announcement. “It is just important that I am still able to compete, because I have never done this sport for anything other than results, to prove myself, to achieve goals, to devote myself to something. I mean, I am a ski racer, no football player – it could never be about finance!
“It was always about competing with the best, proving myself week in, week out, and the nation showing that it was possible, from the UK, to have a career in the top 15 like mine, in his 10th year. Nobody has ever come close.”
He notes that in recent years the sacrifices to be a professional athlete have only increased, with his wife and three -year -old daughter left at home in the winter. Ryding says: “It is very the right moment – right for me and justified for my wife! It was nice to think, anyway, let’s draw a line and just go all the way, and then come the coming [Winter] Olympic Games, try to do my best performance ever. “
Ryding mentions his passion for the sport and “never-heavy dedication”-as “northern grit”-as reasons behind his lifespan: ten consecutive seasons at the World Cup, with his debut on the circuit in 2009.
He adds that a village is needed to support a professional athlete, from coaches to sponsors to his family. “Often you are in a dark place like athlete, it’s not all sunshine and roses. But to have those people behind you, especially my wife, that’s one of the most important things.”
He took a different way to the sport than the will of his Austrian and Swiss competitors, grew up racing on dry slopes, and only cracked the world cup circuit on 28. He laughed at the memory of the first time when he was tied 18th in the 18th of the 20th background when he finally made the Saxis but his but his but his strong buttered to be his but his but his ski run. Snow.
During the Kitzbuhel World Cup in 2017, when he led after the first run, he says: “I had a flashback from the very first dry slope race. I had the same emotions that have had so much competition in the United Kingdom through my body of fear, pressure, excitement, excitement, excitement, excitement.
That turned out to be a memorable day for the 38-year-old: his first World Cup stage, a second place, with his count now up to seven. That includes his historical victory in Kitzbuhel Five years later, when he won the first – and so far alone – Brit who won an Alpine Skiing World Cup.
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That victory is the highlight of his career for obvious reasons. “Not only because I won it, but it also showed the perseverance [required]Because I was the oldest winner of the first time of a World Cup, the oldest winner ever of a slalom, let alone the first Brit. Taking that box was more than what I dreamed of as a child. I just wanted to be in the top 30, so I could participate in the second runs and be able to be on television! I never thought I would be able to win. ‘
A narrow second was his sixth place in the world championships in February, the best result for a British male skier since 1934. After an error in his ski set-up on the first run, Ryding-Op Adapted Ski’s nam is in charge of his second. “I had something like that, you know what, if this is the last world champions, if this is the last time I have a green light [as the race leader]Then I will really enjoy and enjoy it. I probably went over the top, dancing in the leader’s housing! But I will remember that moment forever. It was one of my best days on snow. “
Ryding will want to approach his last season with the same attitude. He says: “As a athlete, the blinkers are on and you don’t look at something other than what you do. I hope I know this is the last time, I will try the moments everywhere I am going to enjoy.”
The hunger and the drive to improve is still there. “Last year I really had the feeling that I had left something on the table with only a ninth in a big event [his previous best at the World Championships]. I felt that that is not a real replication of my assets. I really liked to improve that, and that is the same kind of approach that I will try to bring this season. “
Ryding has no concrete plans for his life after retirement; He and wife Mandy ran a cafe until daughter Nina was born, and a switch in the business could be on the cards, while he will probably continue in his mentorrol for Club APEX 2100 in Tignes. But for now the family comes first-“Until the moment my wife comes to kick me out of the house because I am so annoying when I am always at home!” He jokes.
Ryding is enthusiastic about the future of Alpine Skiing in Great -Britain: In addition to World Cup teammates Laurie Taylor and Billy Major, he says, there are plenty of younger athletes who can bring the sport to larger heights.
“I listen to the next generation and the generation afterwards, because I am so old and they are already coming through, they talk about podiums, over winning. It is something that was never talked about when I was young,” he says. “The biggest thing I have seen in the last 10 years is the feeling of faith from the British that come through, and I think that will just open more performance.
I remember that I hit my head against a brick wall that tried to win that victory. I really felt that it was there, I had won halfway through the second runs, three -quarters down, and then I made small mistakes, and I never got it. But once I got that, I got through that kind of ceiling, then I was that people opened people, “this is really a dry grind.
Ryding will forever have a place in the history books such as the first Alpine World Cup winner of Great -Britain, although he hopes that athletes can go “above and outside”.
What Ryding would like to be remembered is the dedication that supports his career. “I think if it shows younger children the dedication it needs … Whatever you do in life, you can go outside and achieve it. Whether you are a journalist or a doctor or a lawyer, or a ski racer, the application to a task consistently consistently, you can achieve a number of things you never thought,” he says.
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