6 days Ago
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.
Zyw was diagnosed with MND at age 30 (Picture: Courtesy of Davy Zyw) The Scot has continued to push his body despite the life-changing diagnosis (Picture: Courtesy of Davy Zyw) '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.
.. Ben Fleming.
