OLYMPIC THOUGHTS
McMorris tough as nails
Craig McMorris realizes people might write off his little brother when it comes to competing for Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
After all, Mark McMorris is recovering at Vancouver General Hospital from a laundry list of injuries including a ruptured spleen, fractured jaw and left arm, collapsed lung, pelvic fracture and rib fractures after crashing into a tree Saturday in the backcountry near Whistler, B.C.
On Tuesday, Canada Snowboard provisionally nominated McMorris and his teammate Max Parrot to the 2018 Olympic team — provided both reach a minimum performance criterion at an eligible event during the 2017-18 competition season.
“It’s more than possible,” Craig McMorris said Tuesday of Mark’s inclusion on the Olympic team. “It’s for sure. I mean, he’s tough as nails. It’s been 48 hours and he’s gone from being the most broken human to talking and communicating.
“He’s got a stronger grip than I do in his right hand. The amount of progress he’s made in the last two days is insane. I’m 100 per cent confident. In his mind, he’s going to the Olympics. In my mind, he’s going to the Olympics. There’s no reason why he can’t.”
There was reason to believe McMorris might not survive — never mind snowboard again — on Saturday when he soared off a makeshift jump and veered into a clump of trees at high speed. The 23-year-old Regina native did not lose consciousness, but he struggled to breathe due to the collapsed lung, broken ribs and the blood in his mouth from the broken jaw.
Craig McMorris and a handful of friends on site peeled off their jackets to create a nest for the injured Olympian. They couldn’t move him for fear of a spinal cord injury, and hypothermia was a real danger while waiting about 90 minutes for search and rescue personnel to arrive. Every minute counted due to the ruptured spleen.
“You can die from that, from bleeding out,” Craig said. “But it was so hard for him to breathe, so that was my biggest concern with time. I communicated that to the search and rescue, and that’s why they got there as fast as they possibly could. Mark knew it was super bad. I knew it was super bad. But you just have to think positive, and that’s why he is still here.”
Search and rescue personnel airlifted McMorris off the mountain to the Whistler Health Care Centre, where doctors arranged for medevac to Vancouver General Hospital. On Saturday night, he had surgery to stem internal bleeding from his spleen. On Sunday evening, he returned to the operating room for surgery to repair his jaw and arm fracture.
“He’s talking, hanging out,” said Craig, who posted a picture of his brother — with a bruised face and tubes in his nose — Tuesday on Instagram. “His personality is back. He’s more sassy than he’s ever been. It’s all positive.”
Mark McMorris won bronze in slopestyle at the 2014 Sochi Games. The son of Saskatchewan politician Don McMorris, he is a six-time Winter X Games champion and the winner of two 2016-17 Crystal Globes — one as the overall World Cup champion in Big Air and another as the overall FIS Freestyle World Cup champion.
Off the mountain, he starred with Craig in an MTV reality show, McMorris and McMorris, and in a movie called In Motion, which documents a year of skyscraping jumps and tricks in backcountry around the world. A cult hero with 157,000 Twitter followers, McMorris even has a video game in his name called Mark McMorris Infinite Air.
McMorris recovered from a broken femur in 2015 and competed in Sochi with broken ribs. His pain tolerance is legendary.
Craig said the early signs indicate his brother is about to author a comeback for the ages.
“Obviously, this was an incredibly severe, traumatic event,” Craig said. “The injury list is exponential. There’s so much wrong. Obviously, he’s not sedated, but there’s a lot of pain medicine. And the amount of movement he is doing is amazing. It blew me away. He’s back and it’s crazy.”
He’s tough as nails. It’s been 48 hours and he’s gone from being the most broken human to talking and communicating.