Speedskater racing again after devastating crash and stroke
CALGARY — Denny Morrison narrowly escaped death in a May 2015 motorcycle crash that broke his femur, punctured his lung, turned his knee into “mashed potatoes,” fractured a bone near the bottom of his spine, bruised his liver and kidneys, and left him with a concussion.
Less than a year later, in April, he suffered a stroke in Salt Lake City at the end of a three-week bike trek on the Arizona Trail.
At age 31, he takes blood thinners and battles crippling fatigue. When he gets tired, the four-time Olympic medallist fights for words on the tip of his tongue.
But Morrison steadfastly refuses to use any of his challenges as an excuse for failing to realize his potential on the speedskating oval.
In a scene fitting a made-for-TV movie, the Fort St. John native raced last Friday for the first time since suffering the stroke. He set a personal best of three minutes, 42.21 seconds over 3,000 metres at Calgary’s Olympic Oval Fall Classic.
Not bad for a guy many assumed would never skate competitively again. No excuses. No matter what. “It would have been too easy to quit,” Morrison said this week. “It would have been a cop-out. Like, ‘Oh, I was in a motorcycle accident. Let’s call this a career and move on.’ Same with the stroke. It would be too easy to just say, ‘I’ve had a stroke. Let’s call it a career.’ It would have been too easy. This is the rest of my life I’m talking about.”
Morrison credits the quick thinking of his girlfriend, fellow national team skater Josie Spence, for saving his life when the stroke hit in Salt Lake City.
Spence noticed the symptoms — the facial drooping, the slurring of speech and the fact his left flip-flop kept falling off — and texted the team doctor, who ordered the pair to go straight to hospital. Medical scans confirmed Morrison suffered a brain blood clot and carotid artery dissection, the most common cause of stroke in young adults. The arterial damage can occur in motor vehicle collisions, and doctors believe there’s a link between the motorcycle crash and the stroke.
On June 15, Morrison had two stents inserted in his damaged carotid artery. Upon release from hospital, he was under strict orders to not let his heart rate climb over 120 beats a minute. The danger was too great.
A month later, he received clearance to raise his heart rate by five beats per minute every week until he reached his maximum of 186. He hit the maximum about half a dozen times before the gun went off last Friday in his return to racing.
“I had to build up the courage to be able to push myself hard enough to get to my maximum heart rate,” he said. “I had to bring back in my ‘no excuses’ philosophy. The reason that I couldn’t get my heart rate up — that’s past. It’s done. It’s over. It’s behind me. And now there’s no excuses again.”
Morrison adopted the no excuses philosophy in 2012 partly in response to his disappointing performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Three months later, he won his second individual world title.
Come the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Morrison hopes to inspire Canadians with a message of perseverance and determination.
“There’s a lot of cases where people limit themselves,” Morrison said. “They’re like, ‘I twisted my ankle. I probably should never play basketball ever again.’ And I don’t know what advice they got from a doctor. I don’t know their exact situation. But that’s an option to just choose to never try again ...
“If we start setting excuses for ourselves, then we’ll never overcome anything.”