When Davy Zyw was a schoolboy, he could look out from his classroom and see the dry ski slope in Hillend, Edinburgh. A 15-minute bus ride after school took him to his granny’s house who lived at the foot of the slope.
‘I spent my entire youth and my teens up Hillend just riding this one jump,’ he recalls. ‘It taught me everything I know about snowboarding.’
Having left school at 16, Zyw held onto his dream of becoming a professional snowboarder. The Scot spent a few seasons in the Alps; working, competing and ‘living the snowboard dream’ before a serious knee injury forced him to park his dreams and head to university.
Now 37, Zyw has decided to chase his childhood dream once again. Except now, it’s a completely different challenge.
That’s because, in February 2026, the father-of-one hopes to become the first athlete with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) to compete at a Winter Paralympics, a little less than eight years after his initial earth-shattering diagnosis.
What began with numbness in his hand while snowboarding in Whistler soon became a torturous nine-month journey of tests and consultations, a process of elimination before the fateful diagnosis in April 2018 aged just 30.
‘It was so tough,’ Zyw tells Metro as he reflects back on the start of his journey with MND. ‘You are looking for that clarification for what’s going on – I was fit, busy at work, enjoying my life – but when it arrived it’s like the fabric was torn out of our lives.
‘It was an absolute bombshell and incredibly difficult for my fiancée at the time, all my brothers, my friends, my family. I had to have some very difficult conversations with my family, which is what do I want to get out of the time I’ve got left?
‘Looking back now, I’m so lucky. I’m not lucky because my symptoms are now worse, but I was so lucky that I got real purpose and real clarity about how I want to spend my time, my precious time on this planet.’
Zyw’s time is still precious but almost seven years on from his diagnosis, he has outlived even the most positive prognosis. Despite being told to avoid strenuous exercise, the Scot has continued to push himself to the limit and has been rewarded both mentally and physically by his refusal to let the disease taper his aspirations.
‘If I stand still at any point, I’m sliding down this icy slope into the abyss of being a paralyzed burden on my family,’ he says. ‘So I’ve got to work extra hard not to get stronger but just to maintain my function, my range of movement, my functionality, my dexterity, my strength because otherwise, I’m looking into a pretty dark place.’
Cycling has been his main outlet. In 2020, he completed the North Coast 500 and in 2022 he rode the notorious ‘High Five’ route in the Scottish Highlands – 265 miles in one day with 19,000ft of climbing. In total, his various efforts have raised over £1million for charity, mostly for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, started by former Scotland rugby player Doddie Weir, who died two years ago with MND.
But now, two weeks on from being declared eligible to compete by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Zyw has retrieved his snowboard and revived his childhood dream as he targets a place at the 2026 Winter Paralympics in Italy.
Zyw is under no illusions as to the difficulty of his latest challenge. He still works part-time as a wine buyer and must earn his spot in the Games by competing against younger, fresher para-athletes, many of whom live in snowier climates and train full-time.
Funding is also a problem – the 37-year-old will receive no support from Team GB unless he makes the team later this year – but a silver medal in Dubai and a 12th-place finish in Holland up against a stacked field including the defending Paralympic champion has given him the confidence that he can hold his own.
‘I didn’t quite realise how professional it would be,’ Zyw admits. ‘I’m competing against professional athletes who live with snowboarding every day and are on the mountain 200-300 days a year
‘But I love the journey and the challenges that come with it. MND has been such a negative aspect of my life and my health, but you have to search and find the positives within that. And I think this opportunity to compete at an international level with MND is extraordinary.’
Zyw will continue to throw himself into events in the New Year. His next competition is in Finland in early January, but there will also be visits to Austria, Germany and perhaps Serbia as he looks to qualify for the World Cup series.
From there, a top-15 finish would be enough to qualify for the Paralympics but Zyw has to prepare for an uncertain future knowing his condition, which at present mainly affects his hands and arms, will only worsen as time goes on.
‘Given the lack of snow, cycling is still my main method of training to keep my fee,’ he says. ‘I can get on there and smash out 100 miles but ask me to hold a pen or to do a button up or to open a packet of biscuits – these things are near-impossible for me.’
But Zyw draws inspiration from all around him. Whether it is his wife Yvette and three-year-old son Aleksander (‘The best thing that’s happened to me by a country mile’) or the incredible efforts of Kevin Sinfield to raise money for MND in honour of his late friend Rob Burrow, Zyw is hellbent on inspiring others as he looks to achieve his goal.
‘It’s about bringing MMD to the world stage,’ he ends. ‘It would be an incredible thing for the whole MMD worldwide community to have someone with this currently incurable condition on a world stage and show that you don’t have to give up on your dreams. That awareness drive will aid funding and hopefully help us find a cure one day.’
To donate and support Davy Zyw’s bid for Paralympic qualification please click here.
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