Making Paralympic history Martin Greig talks to Davy Zyw from Berry Bros. & Rudd
brought to a premature end when he sustained a knee injury while on a magazine photoshoot. When he wasn’t snowboarding, Davy had trained as a chef and his injury forced him to turn to the kitchen full-time, where he found his second calling, and career, in wine. He remained a recreational snowboarder travelling the world with his board, and it was while he was on a trip to Whistler in British Columbia that he first experienced a numbness in his left thumb and a subsequent weakness in his left arm. A frustrating year of tests and a process of elimination eventually led to a diagnosis of MND on 6 April 2018. “I was as fit as anything,” says Davy who had run an ultra-marathon that same year. “I was in the prime of life, career going well, I just landed a job with the famous Berry Bros. & Rudd, I had an amazing girlfriend. All these things were going right, but then there was this underlying darkness.” Davy dealt with his diagnosis by throwing himself into cycling, finding an inner peace and meditation on the road. Within three months, he had entered a charity cycling event organised by the late Doddie Weir, the former Scottish rugby international who had been diagnosed with MND the year before. Weir was now campaigning to raise awareness of MND along with millions of pounds for research through his My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. After the event, Davy stood in a long queue to meet Doddie. “I eventually introduced myself to him and said I’ve
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Davy Zyw. Image: Paralympics GB
For Davy, the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympic Games were staged almost eight years to the day after his diagnosis of MND, and 26 years after he first strapped on a snowboard on an Edinburgh dry slope. “The scale of the Paralympics is really daunting,” he says. “It’s an intense environment with race officials and cameras. I was incredibly nervous, but I also had an inner peace knowing that I had achieved my dream.”
The oxygen-depleted atmosphere and unpredictable weather in the Italian Dolomites present a challenge for any snowboarder. Add the pressure of elite-level competition and a treacherous course which has caught out more than its fair share of unwary athletes, and they become a cocktail of high risk and reward. For Davy Zyw there is an additional challenge. Dropping into the starting gate in Cortina with his personal Tartan Army lining the course, he is making history – becoming the first person ever with motor Neurone Disease (MND) to compete at the Winter Paralympic Games.
Diagnosis
Having found snowboarding as a schoolboy, Davy left school at 16, moving to France to immerse himself in the sport’s culture and lifestyle. But a promising competitive career was
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