
Wallace first broke onto the scene at the 2011 Parapan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, when he won the men’s 100m T44 in 11.31 seconds, a time that would have been good enough to win gold at the 2011 World Championships.
Apart from the fast time, what made Wallace’s performance so spectacular was that it came just 17 months after his lower right leg had been amputated due to compartment syndrome.
Before his diagnosis, Wallace was an accomplished 800m runner and had been offered a scholarship to race for the University of Georgia.
He made his Paralympic debut at London 2012 finishing sixth in the men’s 400m T44; he also raced as part of the US team that was disqualified in the 4x100m T42-46 relay.
At the 2013 World Championships in Lyon, France, he came of age winning two gold medals and smashing three world records. For his achievements, he was named Male Para athlete of the Year by USA Track & Field.
On his way to gold in the 200m T44, the Athens-born native smashed the world record both in qualifying and in the final, lowering the time to 22.08.
Alongside teammates Jerome Singleton, Richard Browne and Blake Leeper, Wallace was part of the 4x100m T42-46 relay team that also won gold and smashed the world record in a blistering 40.73.
At the Parapan Am Games in 2015, Wallace made his mark once again, this time in the men’s 100m T44, where he smashed the world record previously held by Browne to take gold in Canada in a time of 10.71.
Browne had been absent from the Parapan Am Games due to the birth of his son, but the World Championships in Doha, Qatar, two months later promised to be a thriller.
However, shortly before the Championships began Wallace withdrew; Browne took the tape and the 100m crown, breaking Wallace’s world record in the process.
In 2016 Wallace was back and seemingly ready challenge the likes of Browne and Great Britain’s Paralympic champion Jonnie Peacock for the top spot in Rio.
Throughout the year the American had been in superb form, consistently clocking under 11 seconds. However, at the Rio 2016 Paralympics he ran 11.16, one of his slowest times of the year, to finish fifth in the 100m T44 final. To add to his misery, Wallace and his teammates were disqualified from the men’s sprint relay.
Despite arriving at his second Paralympics as a strong favourite for 100m T44 gold, Wallace failed to medal.
However, the American was determined to put that disappointment behind him - and he did just that, sitting top of the 2017 world rankings in the 200m T44 for much of the year before claiming 200m T44 gold at London 2017 in 22.37. He also won bronze in the 100m T44 in 10.95.
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Biography
Impairment information
Further personal information
Sport specific information
General interest
In 2013 he was named USA Track and Field [USATF] Male Para Athlete of the Year. He was also a member of the 4x100m relay team that was named 2013 United States Olympic Committee [USOC] Paralympic Team of the Year. (redandblack.com, 22 Dec 2013; onlineathens.com, 31 Oct 2013)
In 2012 he received the Athletic Association Inspiration Award from the University of Georgia. (worldoncampus.com, 08 Aug 2012)
In 2019 he featured on the US television show 'American Ninja Warrior', where participants race to complete obstacle courses. "One of the producers reached out to me when they had decided they were going to be filming in Atlanta and asked if I would be interested in competing on the show. I had never been in a ninja gym before, but I knew the show and was a big fan, so I thought it would be a really cool opportunity to share my story and represent US Paralympics as well." (teamusa.org, 05 Jun 2019)
OTHER ACTIVITIES
He has worked as an executive producer on a documentary named 'Race to Tokyo', which followed his preparations and those of Japanese Para sprinter Keita Sato for the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. He has also worked as a motivational speaker and as a project director for Xiborg, a Japanese prosthetic blade company. "We can't control the circumstances that happen to us, but we can control how we respond to them. I help people realise that adversity is relative. We all have unexpected things happen in our life, and it's OK to not be OK.” (LinkedIn profile, 01 Dec 2020; redandblack.com, 26 Jul 2020; Race to Tokyo Facebook page, 04 Sep 2019)
Results
Unit | Date | Rank |
---|
Event | Medal | Unit | Date | Rank |
---|---|---|---|---|
Men's 4x100 m T42-46 | Final Round | 2012-09-05 | 9999 | |
Men's 400 m T44 | Heat 2 | 2012-09-07 | 4 | |
Men's 400 m T44 | Final Round | 2012-09-08 | 6 |
Event | Medal | Unit | Date | Rank |
---|---|---|---|---|
Men's 200 m T44 | Semifinal 2 | 2013-07-20 | 1 | |
Men's 200 m T44 | Final 1 | 2013-07-21 | 1 | |
Men's 100 m T44 | Semifinal 1 | 2013-07-22 | 3 | |
Men's 100 m T44 | Final 1 | 2013-07-23 | 3 | |
Men's 4x100 m T42-47 | Final 1 | 2013-07-27 | 1 |
Event | Medal | Unit | Date | Rank |
---|---|---|---|---|
Men's 100 m T44 | Heat 2 | 2016-09-08 | 2 | |
Men's 100 m T44 | Final Round | 2016-09-09 | 5 | |
Men's 4x100 m T42-47 | Final Round | 2016-09-12 | 9999 |
Event | Medal | Unit | Date | Rank |
---|---|---|---|---|
Men's 100 m T44 | Final 1 | 2017-07-16 | 3 | |
Men's 100 m T44 | Heat 2 | 2017-07-16 | 2 | |
Men's 200 m T44 | Heat 2 | 2017-07-21 | 3 | |
Men's 200 m T44 | Final 1 | 2017-07-22 | 1 | |
Men's 4x100 m T42-47 | Final 1 | 2017-07-23 | 9999 |