McMorris future on hold after nasty fall
Olympic bronze medallist injured snowboarding
By his legions of fans all over the globe, snowboarder Mark McMorris is considered a real-life superhero both on and off the mountain.
But on Saturday, the Olympic bronze medallist proved he is, in fact, human, crashing from unknown heights while snowboarding with his brother and some friends in the backcountry near Whistler, B.C. McMorris suffered a fractured jaw, fractured left arm, ruptured spleen, a stable pelvic fracture, rib fractures and a collapsed left lung in the fall.
Medics airlifted him to Vancouver General Hospital on Saturday where he underwent surgery to stem internal bleeding from his spleen.
On Sunday evening, McMorris returned to the operating room for a second surgery to repair his jaw and arm fracture.
“While both the mandible and humerus fractures were complicated injuries, the surgeries went very well and both fractures are now stabilized to heal in excellent position,” Dr. Rodney French, the team physician for Canada Snowboard, said in a news release. “It is too early to speculate on a timeline for Mark’s recovery.”
The 23-year-old Regina native was recovering Monday in the intensive care unit. Craig McMorris told the CBC his younger brother was unable to talk or move and wrote out a simple message to his family by pen. “He was in the most amount of pain that I’ve ever seen in a human being,” Craig told CBC’s Chris Brown.
Craig, 25, is a professional snowboarder who worked as a special analyst for CBC at the 2016 Rio Summer Games. The brothers routinely snowboard in backcountry locations all over the world with video cameras on hand to capture their sky-scraping tricks.
“Obviously, snowboarding is an extreme sport and backcountry is definitely something that would in the scope of what Mark and many other snowboarders would do,” Snowboard Canada spokesman Eric Escaravage said. “Basically, they head into a non-ski resort setting whether it be by helicopter or by hiking up and certain snowboarders will build jumps in the backcountry. They obviously take a lot of safety precautions.”
The McMorris brothers used snowmobiles on Saturday to reach the jump site where Mark crashed.
“Unfortunately it was a bit of flat light, and he misjudged his takeoff,’’ Escaravage said. “And that resulted in the accident.”
With the 2016/17 World Cup campaign over, McMorris tweeted from Whistler on Friday: “So nice to be ripping around with @Craig_ McMorris again! So so FUN.”
McMorris, a six-time Winter X Games champion, just completed a remarkable comeback season after breaking his right femur last February at Shaun White’s Air+Style competition in downtown Los Angeles. The day after that injury, he underwent surgery to insert a medal rod in the bone that runs from the hip to the knee.
“It was definitely a gnarly injury, but it was a bone break,” McMorris told Postmedia last November. “Bones heal stronger. “It was just a huge freak accident …”
He paused before saying: “I’m trying to find some wood to knock on.”
Bouncing back from the “gnarly” injury, McMorris won three X Games medals this season and two Crystal Globes — one as the overall World Cup champion in the new Olympic discipline of Big Air and another as the overall FIS freestyle World Cup champion.
Before Saturday’s accident, McMorris was widely considered an early medal favourite in both big air and slopestyle at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
“We fully support Mark, and he is already under the incredible care of the staff at the Vancouver General hospital,” said Patrick Jarvis, Canada Snowboard’s executive director. “Mark has shown incredible resilience and commitment to recovering from injury, and we know that PyeongChang 2018 will be a strong motivation for his comeback.”
Canadian BMX rider Tory Nyhaug ruptured his spleen in a May 2012 crash and recovered in time to compete three months later at the London Olympics.
Before this latest crash, McMorris mused openly about the possibility of Canada sweeping the snowboard podium in both men’s big air and slopestyle in PyeongChang.
“There’s a very strong chance,” he said. “We are an insanely dominating nation.”
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, federal Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale, and federal Minister of Sport Carla Qualtrough all sent McMorris messages Monday via Twitter with Wall asking people to “melt his phone with get well wishes.”