Dave Ryding: I’m closer to beating the greats... I haven’t peaked yet

No business like snow business: Dave Ryding in action during the World Cup slalom in Schladming, Austria, last week
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Comparisons between Andy Murray and Dave Ryding do not immediately spring to mind. As Ryding puts it: “For one, I haven’t won anything.”

But still there are parallels between the slalom skier and former world No1 tennis player. Separated in age by just five months, both Brits have found themselves performing in a golden era.

While Murray has faced up to Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic, Ryding finds himself pitted against, arguably, the greatest slalom skier of all time in Marcel Hirscher, an admirable understudy in Henrik Kristofferson and the new wonderkid of the sport, Clement Noel.

“You sometimes wish they’d let me just win one!” jokes Ryding, who learned to ski on a dry slope in Pendle, Lancashire. “But seriously, you want to be going up against the best as it raises you in everything you do and you know you have to be at your absolute best to beat them.”

Ryding has already got the better of Hirscher this season, knocking him out of the parallel slalom event in Oslo earlier this month on his way to second place and a second career World Cup podium, equalling the best ever result by a British skier.

The question is whether he can be the first Briton to move up a step, be it at a World Cup or at the World Championships, which get under way in Are, Sweden, today.

“I definitely race to win — and I’m getting closer and closer to first place,” adds Ryding. “Oslo’s obviously the closest [I’ve come] as the final was a straight head to head. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.”

The 32-year-old lacks the financial support of his rivals but says GB Snowsport boast their most professional set-up ever, a far cry from when the organisation (under a different name) went bankrupt nine years ago.

“I’ve done this long enough to know that what it was before wasn’t pretty,” says Ryding. “It’s great now, there’s no negativity about the place.”

Ryding is seen as the spearhead for the hoped-for skiing revolution at Olympic and World Cup level — the powers-that-be are targeting being a top-five nation on the slopes — and embraces the role.

In that quest, no stone has been left unturned: from tens of thousands of pounds being spent on a life-size mould of him for aerodynamic testing in a wind tunnel in Southampton to the engineering know-how of McLaren’s Formula 1 operation. Ryding fully embraces it. “Take the race suit, for example,” he says. “You hope that makes a difference — and even if that’s a tiny difference, that’s fine.

“You can spend your entire off-season improving by just three-hundredths of a second so, if I can get that gain without doing anything, then great.

“And I love that motivation of so many people working to make me go quicker. On the days when you do sometimes lack for motivation — and that’s not something that happens often — that’s a great driving force.”

In the UK, 1.5million people ski every year and Ryding is hopeful his own skiing exploits — the podiums and, in the future, the hoped-for wins — help to inspire the next generation as he once was.

“I remember Alain Baxter winning his Olympic slalom medal,” he says. “That obviously wasn’t to be (Baxter had the medal taken away when he failed a drugs test for a nasal spray), but watching that was the spark to my fire.

“It was unbelievable. That was the moment when I said, ‘This is what I want to do’, and it felt like something I could do.”

Ryding feels better results are around the corner, both in Are and towards the next Winter Olympics, in Beijing in 2022.

“I’ve had a podium this season but I don’t feel like I’m skiing my best at the moment,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve peaked yet. The last two slalom Olympic champions were 34 and 35. I’m 32 right now, so I’ll hopefully hit my peak in Beijing.”

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