Davos Snowboarding Instructor & Freestyle Coach

Donnie Macleod – Director – Davos Snowboarding Instructor & Freestyle Coach

Donnie Donnie Hails from Scotland and insists “when you can ride there, you can ride anywhere!” and thats him referring to the Cairngorms (Don’t get him started on the hard ships of teaching on the Dry slopes where his career began!)

At the not so tender age of 18 Donnie got sick of bruised shins and put his skateboard to rest (‘big kid’ Stava!) and finally took up snowboarding while studying at Stirling University in 2001. An all too brief stint in the Scottish mountains meant Donnie had to pursue this immediate addiction on the Dry slopes of Hillend outside his home town of Edinburgh. Not to be put off by the ‘brush’ as he affectionately refers to it, he quickly got good enough to begin competing and after a string of early successes quickly became sponsored.

After just a year of riding Donnie began qualifying himself as a snowboarding instructor but it wasn’t until his second season in Andorra, after a stint as a recruitment consultant in Birmingham (‘shock, horror’ – Stava!), that he began climbing the ladder as a professional coach. In Sept 2008 Donnie was invited to join the Great Britain Snowboard Cross development team for the 2010 Olympics. He finshed 8th at the British champs in Laax in March and 2nd at the indoor boardercross champs in September this year.

Donnie now holds his ISIA qualification as a Snowboarding instructor and Freestyle coach and looks forward to the challenges of running the SYNERGY team in Davos.

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Qualifications

BASI ISIA, SNSC mountain leader, freestyle and Alpine coach and European mountain safety leader
Preferred Discipline: SBX and steep dense tree lines in the fresh stuff
Sponsors: RIDE snowboards, Oakley, Special Blend
Equipment: Ride: Dose 162, Beta bindings and Deuce boots
Stance: REG +15 and -12 (always changing them though!)
Favourite trick: anything with a butter leading to a spin followed by a drop please!
If not snowboarding then what? Anything that involves the wheels of my WRX Prodrive Subaru spinning!
Other sports: Skating, Kitesurfing, track days and eh…….hill walking (‘you’re so cool’ – Stava!)