"Quite a strange feeling" - Four months on Matt Walls still struggles to remember details of concussion inducing crash at Commonwealth Games

Four months on from Matt Walls's horror crash in qualifying for the Scratch Race at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, the BORA - hansgrohe rider still struggles to recall the events that led to the incident.

After Team GB's Matt Walls lost control of his bike and went flying over the barricade, into the front row of the Lee Valley VeloPark crowd during the 2022 Commonwealth Games, pictures of the incident went viral online and were seen across the globe. Now four months on, Walls still struggles to picture the event in his mind. "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.”

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“It was the first time I’ve had a concussion,” Walls 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.”

Whilst the session was suspended and Walls was receiving treatment for over 40 minutes, multiple spectators were also given a looking over from doctors after being unlucky enough to have had a flying Walls land in their lap. "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’.

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Now fully recovered, the Bora-Hansgrohe rider is looking to bounce back on the road in 2023. “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.”

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