An Interview with Tyler Wallasch
- Pierson Shute
- Jan 15
- 9 min read
Q: So, first and foremost, how did, preseason go? How are you feeling? You feeling ready for the season?
A: “Yeah, I mean, I think as I get older, I don't need as much time on snow, and coming off an injury, not needing as much time on snow was helpful. I, like, kind of fell right back up to speed once I got over to Europe, jumped on a track pretty quick, and was competing right away… From there, it felt like a normal preseason. Jumping in with the guys, trying to get some heats, work on some small stuff. At this point, I'm not gonna revolutionize my skiing, but getting back up to my speed and fixing some small things… went really well.”
Q: And speaking of the knee injury, how's the knee feeling?
A: “Knee feels good. I wasn't sure how it was gonna go, tearing my ACL. I've done it before, but that was 9 years earlier… being a little bit older, I wasn't sure how quickly I could come back from it… But it was pretty much smooth sailing, worked super hard… back on snow, the knee felt normal, felt great. So, yeah, it's feeling good.”
Q: If you had one big takeaway from the whole recovery process you'd want to pass along to other people going through something similar, what would you say it was?
A: “Oh, one big thing. I mean, there's so many… It can be a daunting task to come back from an injury, but focusing on small things every day, I think, is the biggest help… When you first get out of surgery, it can feel like, oh man, I have 9 months before I can do anything, but there's so many things you can do off the bat… Focus on small wins. Every day. Like, I picked working on my upper body strength for, like, the first month and then I would try to get in the gym and work on something else that I felt like was a weakness, so I could see some visible progress… and that just helped kind of get the ball rolling for the knee as well… All of a sudden, 6 months goes by, and you're like, oh, wow… it was so rough in February, then March was a bit better, then April got a little bit better, and then by the time I was moving around kind of normal, time was flying.”
Q: What first inspired you to get into Ski Cross specifically? And what keeps you passionate about it today?
A: “I think what initially got me into it, I mean, a person did, it was John Teller. He was volunteering at Mammoth High School when I was playing football there, and I was a ski racer. John would jump in a little bit with us on Alpine training… and he would talk to me there, he'd talk to me at football practice, and tell me, like, oh, you'd be good at ski cross if you'd come give it a try. And I was kind of disregarding it for a while, and then when I finally tried it, I was absolutely hooked… I was having so much fun during the training day that I did, like, 8 runs of training, and my legs were totally smoked… I kind of knew there, I was like, okay, I'm into this.
“I'd say what is interesting to me about ski cross is, like, how complete of a racer you have to be. You can be the fastest skier, but you might not be the fastest ski crosser… There could be a guy who's a second off you, but he knows your weak point on the track, and can blow by you… There's so many things to work on… There's the starts, the more technical turns, more gliding sections… so many aspects of all the other racing elements on top of… then you add in 3 other skiers, and you have to adapt to that pretty quickly, or just get really good at being the best ski crosser, and I think that's a really interesting part of the sport.”
Q: Do you have a specific favorite course you like racing every year?
A: “Usually, the ones I do the best at last. But, I mean, Valto's a classic. It was my first race in Europe. I do love that mix of the gliding up top, and the technical turns at the bottom, and the big technical turns… And for the last few years, it's been our starting race, and so it's hard not to just, like, really look forward to that one.
“One that's not on the calendar this year is Reiteralm. I've had a podium there… Usually, it's a track that kind of makes me nervous when I first get there… you're kind of, like, tight in the trees. It's dark in sections, you're going from dark to light a lot, and it feels like you're just in, like, a hallway. It's like a hallway fight scene, really. You're three guys, and you're like, there's just trees on both sides the whole way down… It feels extra fast just because you're, like, in this narrow environment… So that one, it's a little bit love-hate… but then once I get racing and kind of have the blinders on, I can level it up a little bit when it comes to racing.”
Q: Ski Cross requires both technical precision and raw power (and, honestly, just balls). How do you balance all sides of the training and preparation?
A: “What really helps those other things come together is when you've got a little bit of luck on your side, too… There used to be bigger athletes or, like, smaller technical athletes, and they kind of had their races where they performed better. Nowadays, everyone's big, strong, and agile… You have to be so well-rounded…
“If you got really big and you're really powerful in your legs, you might not be able to get out of the start very quickly, and it's way easier to win a ski cross race when you're out in front… There's just so many pros and cons to every step you make in the sport that, once you get something dialed, you almost have to adjust for the negative that it caused.
“It's almost like you're playing a video game when you're adjusting the sliders, like, find your perfect balance that fits your style of racing. And it's not easy, you don't get sliders. You gotta put some time in the gym and time training to figure out those skills… And then, at the end of the day, yeah, like you said, having balls… You gotta add some risk to it… Someone who's always willing to make a risky pass, maybe doesn't always work, but other guys will know that guy's willing to make a risky pass, and they're gonna be on their toes waiting for it.”
Q: You've represented the U.S. on some of the biggest stages, Olympics included. What does it mean to wear the American uniform and compete for the U.S.?
A: “Oh, it's incredible… It was a lot to take in at the last games… A lot of the people that you see there, it's like you're at the water cooler at the start of your normal job. Like, all the guys I'm competing against, I see every weekend, I travel with a lot of them, I race against them, I train with a bunch of them.
“What made China kind of feel maybe a bit calmer was that there wasn't the immediate surrounding of the hype, because we were pretty isolated there… We were kind of just with the guys you're with all the time anyway. And then I got home and kind of heard people who had watched it… Getting back to the U.S. is when I kind of really felt like, oh, that was kind of a bigger… bigger deal.
“Leading up to it, my whole life growing up wanting to become an Olympian, it feels like a really big deal… It's also a huge achievement. I'm really proud of getting to represent the U.S. in ski cross in 2022. Hope I get to do it again. And it's a big deal in our sport when we've only sent four athletes ever to represent United States Ski Cross. And so to be a quarter of that group was… really cool. And then the guys who did it before me have… mentored me, and I've looked up to, and helped get me into the sport, and keep me in the sport… Hopefully I'll be the first one to go for two, representing the U.S.”
Q: Who do you think pushes you the most when you're on the course?
A: “What's funny is that it used to be Chris Del Bosco… back when he was representing Canada, now he's my teammate, representing the United States. When I was early in my career, we had an on-course little scuffle… and he was mad at me… Fast forward, Dale barely even remembered it, but he ate me up. I wanted to race him every time, because he was always just, like, this legend of the sport, and I wanted him first round every race, and I wanted to beat him for, like, 7 years. He… probably won 9 out of 10 of those matchups, but I wanted him.
“Nowadays, the field is just so deep, it's hard to say, like, any individual person might push you more… you can't really look at any heat these days and be like, oh, I wish I was in that one. Every heat you're in, you're like, that sucks… Everyone's real good, real close… When you think about qualifying in general, for the top 32, we're, like, one and a half seconds apart… between first and 32nd… It's probably, like, 12 feet. And if you had four guys in 12 feet on a track, that's a real tight race, and 4th place can easily win that heat… So when you get to that first round of the 32, it is absolutely anyone's game.”
Q: What's been your most memorable race moment so far?
A: “That is a tough one… I have, like, 130-something World Cup starts now, so they're kind of all starting to meld a little bit. I would say, at least, like, one moment I've actively tried to have was during qualifying in China at the Olympics… Someone had told me you're not, like, officially an Olympian until you compete. So, like, you can make the team, but until you, like, suit up and compete in the Games, you're not an Olympian.
“I remember during the qualifying in China that it was super windy, we kept having a bunch of delays… qualifying wasn't… it was more of a seeding, because there were 32 men there, so everyone qualified… Partway through that, I kind of remember thinking, like, this run doesn't really matter. All it's doing is it's the first, technically, competition of the Games, and so when I leave the start gate, I am officially becoming an Olympian… I'm really grateful I came across the line in qualifying with a small, like, little victory of being like, nice, it's official. Like, I'm an Olympian now.
“The run wasn't very good. I had crazy wind all the way down… But I had a great time on that run. And it was just a solo run. I have probably way more fun heats.
“I'd say the most fun I have in a race is going fourth to first in a run… those runs where you, like, have that bit of, like, oh, I'm in trouble, and then you get one guy, then you get the next guy, and then you're in first, and you cross the finish line… the adrenaline dump throughout that whole run as it's building… those runs are my favorite once they're over… A pass is hard at the World Cup level, and then you get three in one run, and you can just pick them off, like, one at a time, and plan your move, and execute it, and it just starts flowing.”
Q: What message or advice would you give to a young skier who dreams of representing Team USA in Ski Cross one day?
A: “Have fun skiing. I mean, I think what helped me kind of have that natural ability, let's say, starting into ski cross, was getting off a chairlift that's a 4-pack, and racing my buddies to the start of our training course, training Alpine, or whatever we were doing. We get off in a 4-pack off the chairlift, and we're racing to wherever we're going. It's not really that different from a ski cross start gate when you have three guys on each side of you.
“Just that ability to free ski around a mountain, have fun in terrain, make some quick decisions, it translates directly to ski cross… Skiing around with your buddies, trying to outdo each other, or just race against each other, and having fun doing it sets a huge foundation for progressing in ski cross.”
Photos by @agencezoom
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