It was a rather historic day at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics today, as the ski half-pipe made its debut at the Olympics, with the men competing in the event for the first time ever. There are a few names in contention for the medal places and one name that was among the hopefuls at the start of the day was Torin Yater-Wallace.
Torin Yater-Wallace doing his thing
Prior to the start of the first ever ski half pipe event at the Winter Olympics, Torin Yater-Wallace took time to talk about the event a little bit, to give the fans more of an idea of what to expect from it. While discussing it, Torin touched on some of the issues with the ski half-pipe and where the difficulties in the events lay.
Yater-Wallace explained, "You go up the wall that’s 90 degrees, and you go straight up and you have to come down and land perfectly in the transition. If you pop too much — like if you press off of the wall too much when you take off — then you can go up and come down into the flat part and land very flat. Or if you don’t pop enough and you absorb the takeoff, you’ll land on the part that’s called the deck, the flat part of the half-pipe on top. There’s not really a lot of room for error. The deck is a lot scarier than coming up a little short on a jump [on the slopestyle course]."
Torin Yater-Wallace is a top ski star
Unfortunately for Torin Yater-Wallace, he failed to take too much of his own advice, falling on both of his runs in the qualifying round of the ski half-pipe. Torin finished in a lowly 26th place, missing out on a shot at a medal but, despite the disappointment, Yater-Wallace remained upbeat and wished the rest of the competitors good luck. What a nice guy!
Torin YAter-Wallace at his best
