FRIGHTENING TWIST
Canadian snowboard sensation Mark McMorris recovering from major injuries after backcountry spill with early Olympic berth set to be announced,
Canadian snowboarding star Mark McMorris is known for his resilience and returning to the top of his sport against the longest of odds.
That skill will be tested now more than ever before.
The 23-year-old Olympic bronze medallist is recovering at Vancouver General Hospital after multiple surgeries to repair a fractured jaw and arm and ruptured spleen. He also sustained a pelvic fracture, rib fractures and a collapsed left lung in a backcountry snowboard accident in Whistler, B.C., on Saturday.
“The surgeries went very well and both fractures are now stabilized to heal in excellent position,” said Canada Snowboard’s physician, Rodney French. “It’s too early to speculate on a timeline for Mark’s recovery.”
In an interview just two days before his accident, McMorris was thrilled that his weekend plans included backcountry riding and that Snowboard Canada would be announcing Tuesday that he had already qualified for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
After a season of riding the hardpack snow in terrain parks, slopestyle courses and big air jumps — which take a toll on the body — McMorris spoke about how excited he was to have a chance this spring for some fun, riding in the softer backcountry snow and filming. Those are parts of his sport that he hasn’t been able to enjoy since his last injury, a badly broken femur in 2016.
“It’s gnarly riding the hard pack all the time and doing crazy tricks every weekend,” McMorris said. “It’s cool because it feels really good when you do it and do it well, but you take a lot of hits to the body, and that’s fine but I’m looking forward to riding some softer snow and kind of doing the side of snowboard where it originated from.”
McMorris is known for pushing the limits — he was the first rider to bring the difficult triple cork into a slopestyle competition and tried a risky quadruple cork at the 2017 Aspen X Games, a move he’d never even attempted in practice. But on Saturday, he wasn’t trying anything out of the ordinary, just riding a jump with his brother Craig and a group of friends when he crashed, according to Snowboard Canada.
His spot on the Canadian team still stands as long as he can show he’s ready to compete next season before the Games, said Patrick Jarvis, Canada Snowboard’s executive director.
“We know that Pyeongchang 2018 will be a strong motivation for his comeback,” he said.
Beating the odds is nothing new for McMorris, who was on top of a podium less than a year after breaking his right femur — the biggest bone in the body — and won a bronze medal in slopestyle’s Olympic debut in 2014, less than two weeks after cracking a rib.
For all the cynicism surrounding the International Olympic Committee — political scandals and cost overruns with venues — the Olympics matter a great deal to athletes. Even NHL players, with a fortune in their bank accounts, want to play for their country and stay in the athletes’ village in shared rooms with twin beds. This is how McMorris first summed up the news that he had been nominated for a spot to compete in Pyeongchang: “So cool, best news ever.”
That’s from a guy who has been travelling the world as a professional snowboarder since he was a teenager and has starred in his own television show and video game.
“I’m really stoked for my parents, too,” McMorris continued about making the team. “My parents love the Olympics.”
That’s Don, a provincial politician, and Cindy, a nurse, who managed to raise a trick-throwing, mountainloving snowboarder in the flatlands of Regina.
“The Olympics are special because they change your life,” McMorris said. “It changed my life last time for the better, and if I can do what I want to do at the next ones it’d be really good for my career.”
His Olympic hope, which is unlike- ly to have changed despite his accident, is to win two gold medals: one in slopestyle, his signature event, on a course of multiple jumps and rail features; and another in the Olympic debut of big air, which is a single jump.
As well as his personal challenge to recover from so many serious injuries less than a year before the Games, McMorris’ biggest obstacle may well be his own Canadian teammate, Max Parrot. He has a similar dream and was also nominated for a 2018 spot based on standout performances this season.
That leaves just one men’s spot to be decided and four top contenders who could easily make just about any other national team. That’s how deep Canada is in this discipline.
“It’s definitely a little relief,” Parrot said of locking up the Olympic spot.
Unlike many summer and winter athletes whose careers live and die by an Olympic performance every four years, McMorris and Parrot have a popular professional circuit and major annual showcase at the Aspen X Games. But the chance at an Olympic medal is still a thrill like no other, they say.
“We do have a career with a lot of contests, but most of these contests are watched by people that already know what snowboarding is. But with the Olympics we have the chance to promote our sport to the whole world, and maybe inspire others to start snowboarding,” Parrot said.
At the last Winter Olympics in Sochi, Parrot wasn’t an early selection. He only found out he was going two weeks before. He finished fifth in slopestyle’s debut.
McMorris was already on the cover of the biggest snowboarding magazine heading into Sochi, but the mainstream media attention that came with the Olympics saw his fan base double, and people recognized him on the street.
“I just want to be able to snowboard for as long as I can, go to the Olympics and win two golds … and you’d probably be contracted to snowboard for many, many years,” McMorris said. “It’s the magnitude that event has.”
With so much on the line, it brings out the best in athletes, he said.
“It’s always good to see Olympians compete because you know it means everything. Everyone is trying their very hardest. Nobody is, ‘Oh, I’m going to have a bad day.’ They’re all trying to manifest their destiny.”
McMorris’ journey will be much harder now, but no one who has watched him come back before doubts that, if it can be done, he’ll do it.