Pulling off trick ‘the most magic feeling’
Bath University graduate Lloyd Wallace was unable to make his first Olympic final in the aerials skiing event, but performed a trick never before landed by a British skier.
Although Wallace didn’t make the final, he is taking only positives from his experience in China and is more than pleased with how he performed.
The 27-year-old finished 21st overall in qualifying for last Wednesday’s Winter Olympic aerial skiing final. However, that unfortunately wasn’t enough to advance to the following day’s final, but his positivity was palpable as he said he was “happy to produce some sweet jumps”.
On his first run he was able to lay down a trick that he was unable to land at the last Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Wallace said: “Doing two different quadruple twists and triple back flips, that’s an item ticked off for me. It was a goal of mine to do it before the last Olympics, but I had a crash and couldn’t do it.”
Wallace performed a quadrupletwisting triple back flip, a trick never before landed by a British athlete so to do that on such a prestigious stage speaks of the magnitude of how complicated it is. His first run scored 108.41, a very respectable score but he was unable to follow that up in his second run by being unable to land his trick and that ultimately cost him a place in his first Olympic final.
Wallace added: “The first run gave me loads of confidence going into the second one and I just went for it. I should have parachuted out at the end and put more on my feet. Hindsight’s a lovely thing.”
His run in China has seen the Bath University Graduate come full circle after an accident in 2017 that saw him put in an induced coma after a serious crash in training for the Winter Olympics in 2018. That accident and the subsequent months of recovery and being brave enough to hit the slopes again, a staggering two months after the incident in Zurich, meant his Olympic dream of not medalling but making a final and laying down a trick never before completed took a bit of a backseat.
Wallace finished 20th in Pyeongchang, one place better than he did this year, but the fact he was able to come back from such a harrowing accident and being able to land a trick he was planning to land four years prior should be seen as a win regardless of the fall on his second run and the subsequent failure to qualify for the final.
Wallace said: “I went out there and hit both of my take-offs. I added two jumps that were both straight and gave it my all.”
It’s back to the day job for Wallace now who is a sports agent by day and has been for the last two years after graduating from Bath University with a master’s in management with finance. He was working with athletes who headed
off to Tokyo last year for the summer Olympics and is in fact the agent of former skier turned presenter
and pundit Chemmy Alcott who covered some of the Winter Olympic coverage on the BBC.