BBR’s Davy Zyw launches bid to compete at the Winter Paralympics

Zyw, who has been the UK’s oldest fine wine and spirits merchant’s senior buyer for Champagne and Italy since October 2017, was diagnosed with the little-understood neurological disease aged only 30, but has repeatedly demonstrated his determination to take on some incredible challenges.

Having been a competitive snowboarder in his teens and early twenties before sustaining a serious knee injury, Zyw is now hoping to qualify as the first Paralympic athlete with MND from the UK in any sport and the world’s first Winter Paralympian with the disease at the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

(Rower Nick Scandone competed in the Paralympic Games in 2008 with MND, while curler Cathy Cummins was an alternate on the US team in Sochi 2014, according to Planetski.com).

Road to the games

The signs for Zwy so far are good – he won two silver medals for banked slalom at the FIS Para Snowboard event in Dubai,  and finishing 12^th at a second event in that same week in Landgraaf in the Netherlands, competing against paralympic winners from Beijing. He will need to earn enough points over the coming season to qualify for the FIS Para Snowboard World Cup series –  a series of tightly contested Parasport World Cup races – and will need to be in the top 15 to qualify for Milan.

His MND currently impacts his hands and arms and he will therefore potentially compete in the ‘Upper Limb category’, against para-athletes with a range of disabilities affecting their limbs, including amputees.

MND is an incurable and degenerative disease that affects motor neurones nerve, which are found in the brain and spinal cord and effectively tell muscles what to do. As the disease progresses, messages from the motor neurones gradually stop reaching the muscles, leading muscles to weaken, stiffen and waste, thereby affecting not only movement, but also talking, eating, drinking and breathing.

Despite this, Zyw says he feels “incredibly lucky” and that qualifying for the Winter Paralympics “would be phenomenal” even though “it feels a long way off despite the hurdles I’ve already cleared.”

The thought of qualifying for Milan 2026 gives him “goosebumps”, he adds.

“At this stage, it’s almost impossible to imagine myself there. The standard of competition is incredibly high, many of my fellow para athletes are full time snowboarders so I’m taking nothing for granted, but to be able to compete at this level is really encouraging,” he said. “I need to get faster and tighten my technique for the next races, but feel I’m making progress every time I step in.”

He will also need to raise funds to attend all the qualifying competitions this season – which are estimated to cost around £15,000 – and he has set up a GoFundMe Page to fund his wintersports ambitions.

Fundraising history 

Zyw is no stranger to fund-raising however, having raised over a million pounds for MND research through the charity My Name is Doddy Foundation. In 2020 he completed a gruelling 260-mile cycle trip around the north coast of Scotland with his twin brother, riding along some of the highest roads in Scotland, and earlier this year, he cycled from Edinburgh to Rome.

BBR have supported him by undertaking a series of fundraising events, including a 36-strong peloton of colleagues, producers and friends completing a 325-mile London to Champagne bike ride last year to celebrate the merchant’s 325th anniversary and raise more than £325,000 pounds for the My Name is Doddy Foundation. This year more than a hundred BBR and Hambledon Vineyard staff completed a 100km walk across English vineyards, raising in excess of £180,000.

“I am dreaming big and taking the opportunities in front of me, and hope I’m good enough to qualify,” Zyw said. “Above all I’m going to enjoy the journey and hope to raise awareness along the way.”