The Rocket's modest launch pad

Sheep crossing

Britain, with its temperate climate, hardly jumps out as a skier's paradise. The country gets on average 13 days of lying snow a year, according to the Met Office — Britain's national meteorological service.

There are 67 slopes in the country, according to the Ski Club website, and they include just a handful of indoor snowdomes. The odds, then, of Ryding making it to the top of the sport were low when he first put on a pair of skis.

He remembers turning up for lessons in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeve T-shirt, and getting friction burns off the coarse surface whenever he fell.

Practice sessions and races would often take place on warm summer days. Occasionally, they'd be interrupted by sheep idling across the slope from nearby fields in a region designated by the government as "an area of outstanding natural beauty".

"It's in a national park, so the sheep were free to roam and do their business or whatever on the slopes," Ryding recalled. "If they chose during the training session that they wanted to cross the slope, respectfully, you had to give them time."

Fast starts

The slope is so short that it would take Ryding barely 12 seconds to get from the top to the bottom.

He believes that has helped, not hindered, his professional career.

"When I was first on snow — and still to this day — if there's a flat section, or a particularly flat start to a race, then I'm very, very fast compared to most other people," he said.

Holmes closely monitored Ryding's progress through his teenage years to the point where he could take on Europe's best skiers, all with the technique honed on a dry slope.

"We sometimes get members turning up who have had a couple of ski holidays, they slide about on the bristles and they don't tend to enjoy it," he said.

"But the people who start on the bristles learn the technique of weight on the outside ski, getting a good edge set ... direction and turn shape. So it does instill the fundamental skills."