Asked about Ryding as a child, his mum, dad and grandparents all say the same thing: he never stopped.
But there had to be competition.
“If there were two snails going up a wall, he’d be betting on his one going up first,” his grandmother Muriel told Ski Sunday.
He dabbled in every sport going but it wasn’t until he was eight that he first clipped into skis, not in the mountains, but on the dry slope of Pendle Ski Club.
It became his playground. He did little training on snow until he was 13 though he continued to race on plastic into his early 20s.
Ryding had a late breakthrough to the top circuit of the sport, earning his first World Cup points just a few weeks shy of his 26th birthday and not adding any more until two years later.
He continued to plug away, picking up three podium finishes before he reaped the rewards of his perseverence and resilience in 2022 when, at the age of 35, he became the first Briton, and oldest skier, to win World Cup slalom gold with his victory in Kitzbuhel.
“It’s been incredible to watch his journey and every time he did something, it was like ‘wow’,” said his wife Mandy, herself a former skier for the Netherlands.
“Skiing for Great Britain, not having any mountains, it was just bizarre. First it was a Europa Cup win, then he started making top 30s in the World Cup, World Cup podiums and then he actually won one.
“Even the guys on the World Cup tour were like, ‘How is this possible? He started on dry slopes’. It’s out of this world.”
What Ryding credits the longevity of his career with perhaps comes as a surprise – once running a cafe in Tarleton with Mandy.
Devoting his life to slalom had turned his brain “to cauliflower” but the “real world” had proved to him that the grass wasn’t necessarily greener.
“I realised what I do is really good,” he said. “It reignited that love and the passion.”
Leave a Reply