For the first time all week, Seamus O’Connor acted his age. Shoulders slumped, eyes starting to tear up, he searched the stands for his parents and raised a disconsolate hand to wave at them.

Strictly speaking he was still in fourth place – with the top six in his semi-final to go through – but he knew he’d be overtaken by the time everyone else had their second run. His Olympics were over and it stung. “I’m a little upset,” he said. “I’m definitely a little upset. It looks like two of my best friends are going to be going to the final and I’m not. It’s a little bit of a bummer. I kind of felt I could have been up there with them.”

The hitch in his voice told the story of how close he had come. All week here, O'Connor has looked and sounded anything but 16. That he struggled a little to get his words out now was understandable.

Beginning to freeze
His first run had been a safe enough affair on snow that was beginning to freeze hard as the night-time temperatures dropped to zero. Seven of the 11 semi-finalists fell on their first run, leaving O'Connor in fourth place on a score of 55.00. But it was clear that he would need to improve to hold his position or at least fall no lower than sixth. So he threw himself into his second run and nailed his best tricks of the day.

He was right on course to post a score in the 70s when he came to his final trick at the bottom of the course, a 1260-degree spin – three-and-a-half times around in mid-air. Had he landed it, he was in with a serious shot of making the final.

But he got a little too much air on it and wasn’t able to stick it when he hit the ground. The heel of his board went out from under him and he wasn’t able to stay upright. The 55.00 from his first run stood as his best score; the lowest that made the final was 75.50. Chance gone, Olympics over.

“I was going for a trick that I normally get every time. I hooked into the wall on my toe edge a little too hard and this pipe is really verty (too sharp an angle between the bottom and the start of the wall) and it spat me out to the flat bottom and I wasn’t able to hold on.

“It was going great until that last trick. It was a bit of hard luck, definitely. That was my best run yet, the best I’ve done since I’ve come here and I’m really bummed out that I didn’t end it the way I wanted it to.”

The snow was bumpy and hard and it made controlling your board difficult, all the more so the more complex the tricks you were attempting. Above all, the much-criticised half-pipe course created uncertainty and uncertainty at that speed and those heights can't but lead to fear.

Fun in the air
"The fear is certainly there," said O'Connor. "The point at which you have the most fear and anxiousness is definitely as you're standing at the top, about to drop down. You're shaking, you're nervous. But as soon as you make that first jump into the pipe, you just kind of forget about it. You try to have fun in the air.

“I just went all-out on that last run, I really tried to build up my speed and to go as big as possible. I wanted to just let the fear take a hike for a run and just go for it. And this is just what happens when you try to push your level. If you push too much sometimes things go not the way you plan it.”

He’ll be back. Four more years at this level will stand to him and 15th in the Olympics is no disgrace. For now, he can go back to a normal life after dedicated the past two years to this one. “I have never been able to think of life after this one run. Some people don’t really understand that. They don’t get why someone would train for so long just for 30 seconds. But we do it because we love it and we do it because we get to be here.

This is my first Olympics and I’m 16. I guess I should just be happy that I was able to do it fairly well. At the same time, I’m really quite upset that I’m not joining my friends in the final. It was only a very small mistake.”