World Champs success, World Cup consistency & a World Junior medal- one other Nice British season
A Breakout Season for Alpine Snowboarding
2024-25 has been a season for breakthroughs, surprises, drama and an entire lot extra, with Switzerland, the US and Norway receiving the majority of the media consideration. Nevertheless, Nice Britain has fallen underneath the radar for a while.
Regardless of a restricted price range, a nationwide group that spends little or no time collectively over the course of the season, and a rustic that doesn’t get way more than 10 days of annual snowfall, GB Snowsport continues to punch properly above its weight throughout all snow sports activities.
Ryding Leads, However Help Grows
Dave Ryding, from Lancashire, has set the precedent. He’s the one man to attain factors in each single slalom this season. However the instances are altering. He now shares top-10 honors with Laurie Taylor (Aspen 2024) and Billy Main (Hafjell 2025), each of whom broke by means of within the final 14 months. The long run appears much more thrilling, with the Carrick-Smith brothers advancing steadily all through the season.
Ryding’s potential to encourage a rustic with out the entry to assets of lots of his rivals is a real testomony to the arduous work and dedication the 38-year-old places in every day to ship prime outcomes. The British No. 1 completed the 2024-25 season ranked fifteenth within the World Cup slalom standings, cementing his place within the second seeding group for the beginning of the 2025-26 Olympic season.
Main and Taylor Rising
Taylor and Main have trailed shut behind Ryding for a while, however their consistency has lastly began to point out. Each 28-year-olds recorded top-12 finishes on the World Cup tour this season. In reality, within the final two slaloms of the World Cup marketing campaign, Main beat Ryding at each Kranjska Gora and Hafjell. That ensured, for the second season in a row, Britain had two completely different racers within the prime 10 at some stage.
Girls’s Program Seeks a Spark
Whereas the squad is considerably weaker—and at the moment has no World Cup factors on the ladies’s aspect since Charlie Visitor’s retirement final spring—there are nonetheless positives. Reece Bell and Vici Palla each achieved private bests on the Europa Cup circuit and gained helpful World Cup expertise.
Reece Bell’s title may be acquainted to older ski racing followers. Her father, Martin, and uncle, Graham, raced for Nice Britain within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. If she reaches the heights of her relations, British followers will know the place their girls’s World Cup factors will come from sooner or later. Regardless of spending a lot of her life in Colorado, she is totally dedicated to a profitable profession representing the British flag, even after quite a few harm setbacks in latest seasons.
The Subsequent Technology is Right here
On the identical time, the subsequent era is making critical waves. The Carrick-Smith brothers have spent almost 10 years coaching with the Butler household. Molly Butler, 18, was the youngest member of the British group on the World Championships and elevating her hand with some top-quality shows.
They broke new British floor on the World Junior Championships, the place the eldest Carrick-Smith brother, Luca, 19, received slalom bronze. He turned the primary British World Junior medalist since Graham Bell, greater than 40 years in the past. Surely, Luca, Freddy, Zak Carrick-Smith and Molly Butler are 4 names the world might be listening to way more about quickly.
Steudle Costs on the Pace Aspect
Whereas all of those athletes compete in technical disciplines, one British skier is pushing boundaries within the pace occasions. Roy-Alexander Steudle positioned twenty ninth within the World Championship Tremendous-G and got here near scoring World Cup factors in Kitzbühel. He’ll be recovering from an harm suffered throughout downhill coaching at Worlds after having improved his Europa Cup private greatest this season and can goal his first profession World Cup top-30 end within the Olympic marketing campaign.
Extra Than Momentum
These are only a few indicators of the British group’s continued progress in alpine ski racing. In a World Championship season that noticed Britain ship its largest-ever squad of 14 throughout all disciplines and competitions in Saalbach, each Ryding (sixth) and Main (fifteenth) scored in slalom. There have been many robust runs, promising splits and prime outcomes for a rustic nonetheless battling restricted funding, a brief ski season, and the game’s powerhouses.
For now, no less than, Nice Britain continues to be combating on the highest degree in one of many sports activities it funds the least.
Eyes on Milano-Cortina 2026
Twelve months from now, the dialog might be very completely different—centered on a historic Winter Olympic Video games for GB Snowsport. Britain will goal for its first official Olympic alpine ski racing medal, and Milano-Cortina 2026 could also be its greatest likelihood but to finish the drought. Whereas many nonetheless bear in mind the bronze medal Alain Baxter briefly held earlier than it was controversially stripped after the 2002 Salt Lake Metropolis Video games, an official podium this time would mark a significant breakthrough.
