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Ralf Lyding (* September 8, 1964 in Witten; † February 26, 2019 in Wetter) was a German wrestler. He was European champion in 1990 in free style in featherweight.

Career
Ralf Lyding began wrestling with KSV Witten in 1973, the club to which he belonged until the end of his career. He benefited from the good youth work done in this club under the direction of coaches Klaus Rost and Rainer Brockhoff. Already in 1977 he took part in the German student championship in Gersweiler (now C-Jugend) in greek.-röm. Style in class up to 34 kg body weight the 2nd place. As a 16-year-old, Ralf Lyding started in 1981 at the German Senior Championships in free style in paper weight (up to 48 kg body weight) and reached a good 3rd place. In 1982 he became German A-Youth Champion (age group up to the age of 18) in free style in Bantamweight and 1983 German Junior Champion in springweight. At the German championships of the seniors Ralf Lyding simply did not want to succeed in winning the title. Six times he took 2nd place and four times 3rd place. In 1993, however, it still worked. He finally became German champion in front of his clubmates Jörg Helmdach and Christian Graupeter.

In 1983, however, Ralf Lyding was already German team champion with the KSV Witten.

In 1984, Ralf Lyding began his international career. He took an excellent 3rd place in the springweight at the Junior European Championships in Slaghaven in Denmark in free style, on which he now concentrated. 1985 saw his debut with the seniors at the World Cup in Budapest. He started there at the World Championship in springweight. After a victory over the Greek Panagiotis Kalaitzidis he lost in his next two fights and remained unplaced.

In 1986, Ralf Lyding started at both the European Championship in Athens and the World Championship in Budapest. In Athens he took 7th place in the featherweight and in Budapest he achieved an excellent 6th place. Especially in Athens, an even better placement would have been possible if he had not over-motivated surprisingly lost against the Swiss Ludwig Küng.

The same happened to him at the 1987 World Cup in Clermont-Ferrand. After a victory over the Chinese Li Yianji he lost due to his risky ring against Karsten Polky from the GDR and Didier Vidal from France and reached only the 18th. Place.

In 1988 and 1989, Ralf Lyding had to give priority to his clubmate Jörg Helmdach on the international wrestling mat. He was only used again at the European Championship in 1990 in Poznań, now trained by Michael Kuhn. He had the greatest success of his career there, because he was European champion with five wins. In the final he defeated Karsten Polky with 4:2 points. At the World Cup of the same year in Tokyo