Morrison mindset: Full-speed ahead
Fights to regain form after double setbacks over 12 months
There are days when the frustration borders on demoralization for speedskater Denny Morrison in his dual recovery from a stroke and near- fatal motorcycle accident in the span of a year. After all, the four-time Olympic medallist is considered one of the world’s fastest men on ice. No one with an affinity for speed likes to downgrade from a Ferrari to a minivan.
And some days, that’s how Morrison feels in the fight to regain peak form in time for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
“The 500 metres is not my marquee event, and that’s where my weaknesses show a lot,” Morrison was saying earlier this week. “I feel like I did as a junior. I feel like I’m not executing properly.”
In a Canada Cup race Wednesday, Morrison stopped the clock at 36.52 seconds in the 500 — good for second place but way off his personal best of 34.85.
His lack off explosion off the start — perhaps a souvenir from the motorcycle crash that broke his femur, punctured his lung, ripped up his knee, fractured a bone near the bottom of his spine, bruised his liver and kidneys, and left him concussed — too often leaves him in chase mode.
“It ends up filling your head with this cloud of questions and doubt,” he says. “You never know if you’re going to make it back or if you’re ever going to improve beyond that.”
“As a junior, you have those questions. But as a junior, you keep training and it’s there. But now I’m getting junior- level results at the end of my career, and I’m not seeing those improvements that you kind of get for free as a junior. So it’s challenging.”
Staring down challenges is nothing new for Morrison. In April 2015, a police officer marvelled how anyone could make it out alive from the wreckage of the speedskater’s motorcycle crash near the University of Calgary.
And then came the stroke last spring that could have killed the two- time world champion if it weren’t for the quick thinking of his fiancée Josie Spence, who rushed him to hospital in Salt Lake City.
After both near- death experiences, Morrison insisted to everyone around him that he would skate again ... and win again.
In truth, the odds both times l ooked grimmer t han Donald Trump’s chances at becoming the American president ( and we all know how that turned out.)
Somehow, Morrison qualified in October to represent Canada for the first half of the World Cup season. And somehow, he won a silver medal in team pursuit with Jordan Belchos and Ted- Jan Bloemen less than eight months after lying in the emergency room not knowing if he would ever skate again.
“It’s a victory just to be alive, right?” Morrison says. “But it’s not a victory to be alive if I’m not living.
“That’s the message that I want to help spread with the Heart and Stroke Foundation. We all have setbacks. But especially for stroke survivors, let’s not just be alive and wait to die. Let’s live our lives. Let’s make the most of it and not let these setbacks slow us down too much.”
And so the next step of his recovery comes this week at the Canadian long- track championships where Morrison hopes to qualify for the 2017 World Single Distance Championships in Korea.
“Denny has surprised everybody on the World Cup,” says coach Bart Schouten. “He’s ahead of schedule, even though he wants it to be faster. Obviously, he’s never happy until he’s back on top.”
In speed skating, top-flight base conditioning is vital. Both Schouten and Morrison believe a full summer of training this year — hopefully not interrupted by injury, sickness or some other calamity — will set the stage for success in Pyeongchang.
The game plan calls for Morrison to play things safe away from the ice — although he plans to bike through the Rockies with Spence to their May wedding at Little Shuswap Lake in the B.C. Interior.
“I don’t think I’ll be taking many extra risks or anything like that,” Morrison says. “But at the same time in speed skating — in the 500 metres or in any race — you have to go into the corner and lean it over. There’s always that risk of falling.
“You can’t be worried about that. You have to go in and go for the win. So that’s how I like to train and that’s how I like to live.”