Profile - David Ryding

Dave started skiing at the age of 6, with Pendle Ski Club, and two years later competed in his first dryslope race. However, he didn't start racing on snow until later than most, at the age of 12. With the passion for the sport running all through the family his dad started to develop his coaching abilities and started coaching Dave from then on. Dave's successes on the dryslope gave him the desire to try his skills on snow more often and by 16 he progressed onto the England Ski Team.

As Dave was still at college he had to learn how to juggle education and skiing but in many ways this taught him how to make sacrifices that are needed to get to the top level. Coming out of college and being accepted into Loughborough University to study Sports Science and Geography it was the logical decision to take a gap year and turn his hand to full time skiing with the British Development team. After competing throughout the 2006 season as part of the British Development team, Dave became the Overall Junior champion and was selected for the British Senior Alpine Ski Team.

In 2008 Dave moved onto the Europa cup tour and picked up his first British senior title in Slalom and defended it the next year, winning the overall title as well. Dave got his first taste of top competition at the World Championships in Val D'isere 2009.

The 2009/2010 season started well, with Dave finishing 2^nd in the inaugural South American Cup Super Combined and 18^th in the first Europa Cup of the season. However the next few months proved very challenging with the stress of Olympic selection drawn out over a long time. It proved worthwhile when Dave received the fantastic news that he had qualified for the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games and he placed 27^th in the slalom. Dave realises that the Olympic Games was very much a stepping stone in his career, and it has given him added motivation and desire to continue his journey to the top of the sport!

The 2011 season was Dave's most successful yet. Qualifying for another World Championships and placing a respectable 39^th in the Giant Slalom was one of Dave's many good performances of the season. Dave also placed twice in the top 20 in Europa Cup Slaloms, he was 3^rd in the Slovenian National Slalom Championships and 2^nd in the Hungarian National Slalom Championships before going on to Win the British Slalom and Giant slalom Titles in Meribel.

2012 was a real breakthrough season for Dave, having made significant gains on the fitness side over the summer Dave saw progress also in his skiing.

He managed to get the ball rolling just before the Christmas break securing a 7th place finish in Madanno di Campiglio Europa Cup slalom event scoring 10 FIS points in the process. After christmas Dave went from strength to strength, he achieved 4 further top ten finishes in the Europa Cup with his best being a 5th in Pamporovo, Bulgaria. Placing 7 times in the top 20 in the season's races Dave finished 14th in the overall Europa Cup standings.

Dave had enough left in the legs after the Europa Cup tour had finished to take on the great Ivica Kostelic in his own back yard in the Croatian Champs and finished a close 3rd, before he went on to win the Slovenian Slalom Championships scoring his first ever sub 10 points result!

With these good results in the season Dave in now ranked 68th in the world for Slalom.

Coming into the new season Dave's goals over the summer will be to continue to raise his fitness levels to ever new heights, supplementing technical gains to give him every opportunity to move higher up the world rankings.