Missing out on the Olympics, Elladj Balde's victory came internally: 'It's about finding fulfillment in yourself'

Canadian figure skater Elladj Balde had it all planned out in his head. Actually - in his heart.

He'd qualify for his first Olympic Winter Games in 2014, with Sochi as the host city, and return to his birth country to skate there for the first time in his career with the Olympic Rings running underneath his skate blades.

Instead, Balde would finish fourth at the Canadian championships that year, missing out on the three-man team for Sochi 2014.

It was one of three Olympic cycles that ended in disappointment for the 2008 junior national champion.

"When I realised that the Olympics wasn't necessarily my path, I lost complete sense of who I was because I had this identity of like, 'I'm going to be an Olympian,'" Balde told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview from Beijing on Wednesday (2 February). "And so since that wasn't my journey, it became: 'Who was I?' And, 'Why was I even skating?'"

He continued: "And so it started this journey of just self introspection of: 'If I'm going to keep skating, I have to find reasons that come from within.' Because - at that moment - all the reasons were external. So I spent months kind of just diving deep. That moment for me, it allowed me to find who I was as an artist and start tapping into what I truly love and what I find fulfills me the most, which is connecting with audiences and sharing my story, sharing my gift of being able to make people feel things on the ice."

It wouldn't be for another entire year before Balde said he began to fully understand how to navigate that aforementioned journey. He finished a disappointing sixth at Canadians in 2015, a year when he said he had hopes to win a first senior national title.

But a trip to Africa in the weeks that followed with his father helped that internal exploration find what he had been looking for all along.

The answer? His own happiness: Skating for Elladj.

Elladj Balde: 'How do I want to remember this?'

Sport - by definition - is about achievement. And the Olympics offers tangible measurement in that in handing out medals: Gold, silver, bronze. But Balde, after missing out on the Games in 2014 and beginning a deep journey of self-reflection while continuing to skate, found new purpose in competition, even as he sought to try to make the Olympic team for PyeongChang 2018.

"Especially the last year (2017-18), it was like, 'How do I want to remember this entire - not just the one singular moment - but how do I want to remember this journey?'" Balde, who is also serving as an Olympics.com contributor, remembered.

"And this, to me, holds so much more power in finding fulfillment in yourself and in your life and in who you are versus basing it off of one moment."

Balde has now used his passion for skating and creating art on ice by being one of the most followed skaters on social media: He boasts over 1.2 million followers on TikTok and over half a million on Instagram, and has used his platform and videos to further opportunities for minority skaters, pushing for more inclusion in the sport and aiming to encourage young people - no matter their background - to try out the sport.

Balde himself is Russian and Guinean by way of Canada.

And while he didn't realise his dream of skating at the Olympics, he is the field reporter for CBC at Beijing 2022 this month, offering his perspective and interviews of his peers, friends and former competitors who are seeking achievement at the highest level.

He's offering a different point of view via that coverage, too.

"We're told that success and achievements are going to, you know, make us happy," he said. "But when you think about it as a journey, you experience all the moments the way that they should [be experienced] and allow them to teach you faith and allow them to help you grow in a certain direction as an athlete or as a human. Those are things that you keep for the rest of your life, you know, and those are things that live inside of you and have brought moments of peace inside of you."

"Those things that no one can take away from you."

Elladj Balde: Creating new pathways in skating

Balde would like for his journey to serve as an example for others: Yes, you can achieve at the highest level, winning world medals, qualifying for the Olympics, collecting hardware and accolades.

But, he says, the sport is a special one: It allows room for creation from as many different angles as there are skaters competing in it.

"I would love for more skaters this time to spend time realising not only who they are, but how they can bring that to the ice versus just trying to do all the technical things and for the sake of performance," Balde said. "There's so many layers to skating; it's such a beautiful sport. And it's an art form as well. And you can use that to express yourself in some of the most beautiful ways."

"I think that there is space for more creativity," he concluded. "I'm not sure how that comes into play or how it will evolve, but it would be beautiful to see."