When you’re named for Scottish warrior William Wallace, the sword-swinging hero made famous by the movie Braveheart, fearless feats come with the territory.
So how about sailing 30 feet into the air off a ramp on a bicycle, and doing a backflip?
‘Liam’ Wallace will be doing that and more, as he attempts to turn pro in the sport of extreme mountain biking, at the age of 15.
He will reach this crossroads in his career at Grand Junction, Colorado on May 9. It is the first North American stop on the Freestyle Mountain Bike World Tour.
“This is big,” he said. “I will compete as an amateur, but if I do well in the amateur, and I like it, I’ll be moving up to the pro class.”
It’s been a long time coming. Wallace’s passion for jumping and performing tricks on a bike started when he was very young.
“I yanked his training wheels off his bike on his second birthday,” recalls his father Andy, a local realtor.
“Now it’s what he wants to do for a living, and he’s really close.”
The former BMX racer spends every spare minute after school and weekends on local dirt jumps, and skate parks and in other venues, mastering the skills required. He has caught the attention of a bike manufacturer, and is partly sponsored by Morpheus Cycles of New York.
The stunts Liam does are amazing.
Tailwhips are the toughest to master, as the rider holds the handlebars but swings the bike so the rear tire makes a circle, or doing a 360, turning bike and rider in the air. Backflips draw the oohs and aahs from the crowds, but he says they’re the first jump he learned.
“They’re really overrated, and people think it’s crazy, but it’s not that hard.”
He remembers sailing through the air for his first big jump, coving a 20-foot gap, flying 30 feet off the ground.
“It’s scary, but once you hit it, it feels so good.”
Watching extreme competitors’ stunts, fans have to ask themselves how riders can learn these tricks without hurting themselves.
The answer is that they don’t.
Wallace has injured himself, and quite seriously.
At about age 11 he went off a jump “nose heavy,” or with his front tire too far underneath him, and went face-first into the hard-packed dirt. He broke his jaw, nose, three ribs and wrist, and his face was slashed to the point that his jawbone was visible.
“They (his parents) got a call from the Port Moody Hospital that I had broken every bone in my face,” he said.
It hasn’t slowed him down, although he agrees that it makes him cautious about trying to pull off real challenging stunts after an exhausting day of practice.
“Now when I’m tired, I don’t take that last jump,” he said. “That’s when it happens.”
Other than that, he hasn’t dialed it down at all.
“It’s actually gotten a lot crazier since then,” he said.
In Colorado he will be wearing a helmet offering full face protection and a brace to support his neck.
And he has learned to do most of his most dangerous tricks, like the backflip, over a foam pit at bike jumps in Whistler, where a fall is just an inconvenience.
Staying healthy is a huge part of the sport.
Part of his winter training included competing in the B.C. Cup Four-Cross Championship, and Wallace was the B.C. junior men’s champion for 2013.
Now he hopes to translate that success into extreme mountain biking competition.
“This is what I’d like to do for the rest of my life.”