IT’S BILLY THE KID
Winter Olympics special
FROM wearing a toilet seat around his neck at a party in Sochi to wearing a bronze medal in PyeongChang four years later. What a magnificent hustle this was by Billy the man-kid, who tricked and flipped his old body onto the Big Air podium yesterday.
That he simultaneously carried Team GB to their record-breaking haul of five medals is worthy of note, and doubtless a relief for those in the set up who exchange promises for lottery funding. But, really, this wasn’t about that. How could it be about anything so stuffy?
Not when you consider the kind of wonderful lunatic that resides within Billy Morgan, who was the oldest man in the field at 28 but probably the biggest kid as well.
By his admission, he is cut from ‘the last generation of snowboarders who could get away with it’. He has partied his way through his career, including these Games, and prepared for this final by thrashing around in the woods on a motorbike while younger rivals got some rest.
That is not to talk him down because the sport sees him as pioneer — he was the first snowboarder to land a backside 1800 quadruple cork, which is four flips and five full rotations, apparently.
But that was a while back. Here, he was a huge outsider with two dodgy knees, the left of which was badly hurt in December, keeping him off the snow for almost two months. No sport for old men, snowboarding.
Yet here he was. He crashed after his first jump — a poor position to be in when you have three and your top two scores are combined. But then he delivered a routine of 82.50 points and another of 85.50, for a total of 168 — just 0.75 behind American Kyle Mack, with Sebastien Toutant of Canada taking gold.
As it dawned on Morgan that he had won bronze, he took his mind back to Sochi 2014, where he finished tenth in the slopestyle and then headed for a party, where a toilet seat made him famous.
‘That night Red Bull had a party in Sochi and put bottles of vodka on every table and if there’s a bunch of Brits in a room with vodka, it’s going to end in tears,’ he said. ‘But from the lowest of the low I have a medal. I can’t send it too hard tonight now because I’ve got to go and do stuff. Before I was down and out so I could do what I want.’
The trick that landed him bronze, in his words, was a ‘front-side 14 triple with mute and tail-grab — essentially a triple cork frontside wipe’. That will make little sense to most but, by contrast, it is so easy to relate to his personal tale.
‘I used to work on building sites to pay for my winters,’ he said. ‘I did a bit of roofing and I learned loads of stuff. I almost miss it. But this is the pay off. I’ve done this for a long time and I’ve not got that many medals. I got a bronze in the X Games and I thought that would be my main thing but it looks like this is it.’
There was one sober moment when he considered the recent heart aneurism and recovery by his father — ‘his friends call him Mad Eddie’ — and there was also an insight into the life of an ageing snowboarder no longer convinced of his invincibility. Intriguingly, and plausibly, it ties in with all the parties.
‘I come from the last generation of snowboarders who get away with it (partying),’ he said. ‘I use it as a distraction. I get scared a lot (by the jumps) and it does help to have a couple of drinks, relax and not think about the scary s*** I have to do.’
To his side, there was a big grin on the face of Hamish McKnight, GB’s snowboard head coach. ‘He shows you don’t have to be a cold-hearted machine to be an Olympic medallist,’ he said. ‘Billy can represent free sports as free sports are supposed to be presented. He parties at the right times… and the wrong times.’
This feels like the right time.