Matt Walls has replayed his terrifying Commonwealth Games crash over in his head so many times he sometimes struggles to work out what he can actually remember properly.
As several riders went down on the final lap of qualifying for the men’s scratch race in late July, the Olympic omnium champion was forced higher and higher up the steep banking on the corner of the Lee Valley velodrome trying to find a way through.
But as he neared the top the 24-year-old clipped another wheel, skirted the advertising hoardings and was sent flying over the barriers and into the crowd.
The incident saw the session abandoned as a number of spectators, including a young girl, needed treatment and Walls was attended to for more than 40 minutes.
The Bora-Hansgrohe rider had already suffered a string of crashes in road races during the early part of the season, but nothing compared to this.
“When I was at the top of the track, someone crashed in front of me,” Walls told the PA news agency. “I thought, ‘Here we go, I’m going to crash again.’
“Then the next moment I’m on top of the barrier, looking at this woman in the crowd. I thought, ‘This is strange, I shouldn’t be able to see you right now’. It’s weird.
“I’ve got the image in my head but it happened so quickly, I don’t know if I’ve just played it over in my mind so much and I’m thinking about what I would have been thinking.”
As fans were asked to leave the velodrome, screens were put up around Walls as paramedics carefully positioned him on a stretcher, taking every precaution in case he had suffered broken bones in his neck or back.
Remarkably Walls had avoided any fractures but, having hit his head on the concrete steps when he landed, he suffered a concussion which would affect him for the next six weeks.
“It was the first time I’ve had concussion,” he said.
“I was concussed for quite a few weeks. That was quite a strange feeling and a pretty rough feeling but I got through it in the end with the help of doctors and staff and everyone else.”
The incident effectively ended his season – once he was clear of symptoms, Walls did not have time to get back to race fitness before the calendar ran out.
Instead Walls took an extended break – 10 weeks in total – the longest he has ever spent off the bike since he first got on one.
Having returned to riding a couple of months ago, Walls has been at Bora-Hansgrohe’s winter training camp in Mallorca this month, getting himself in shape for a contract year after so much time was lost in 2022.
“It’s all behind me now, I’ve got no issues at all,” he said.
“It’s just about trying to build my fitness and my strength back up after being so long off the bike. It’s quite a strange feeling having so long off, but with the help of the team things are all on track.”
Walls expects to start his season in Mallorca before heading to the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana and the Tour of Oman in February.
“I need to make the most of it, and win some races,” he said of his goals for 2023.
“It will depend how I’m going. The race programme might change a bit but it’s just trying to build that confidence, get some early season wins and see what happens.
“I think I need to just forget about this season and purely focus on next year and doing what I can to get myself in the best position possible. If I keep dwelling on the past it’s not really going to change anything. It’s best just to focus on next season.”
