MCMORRIS DEALS WITH CELEBRITY STATUS
REGINA — If sales of snowboards take off in the coming months across Canada, vendors can thank a young man from perhaps the least snowboard-friendly place in the country.
Regina’s Mark McMorris has been a celebrity in snowboarding circles for years, with his success at the X Games, on the Dew Tour and in other events worldwide.
But the 20-year-old’s gutsy performance at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia — winning a bronze medal in slopestyle less than two weeks after breaking a rib in a fall at the X Games in Aspen, Colo. — may have put his sport into the national consciousness once and for all.
“I’m just so thankful to be able to inspire not necessarily just a younger generation but generations around me and build a better future for snowboarding, not only in Saskatchewan but across Canada, and give the public a better awareness of snowboarding,” McMorris said Saturday after returning to Regina for the time since Christmas.
“I’ve been lucky enough to win plenty of medals on a world tour stage with X Games and everything, but the Olympics have this major power where it doesn’t matter where I go. If it’s old dudes in suits at the RitzCarlton (Hotel in Toronto), they’re just like, ‘Whooooa! You’re so cooool!’
“It’s cool. (Snowboarding) is really getting known. And (the competition in Sochi) was such a good display of our sport.”
McMorris said it was “pretty heartwarming” to think that kids from Saskatchewan may want to follow in his footsteps in the sport and overcome the province’s landscape to get to the Olympics.
That said, his appeal isn’t limited to Saskatchewan.
Brenna Di Nizio, a 12-yearold from Toronto, got an autograph from McMorris and a picture with him at Regina’s airport after he arrived.
“He’s a really good snowboarder and being from Regina, where it’s kind of flat, it’s really cool,” said Di Nizio, who was on the same flight as McMorris. “I’m also doing an Olympic project on him for school.” She’s not the only one. April Stanton, a Grade 7/8 French immersion teacher at W.S. Hawrylak School, got McMorris to sign a school-produced newspaper featuring articles written by students about the Olympics — and she made sure to display the autographed paper while posing for a picture with him.
In Stanton’s words, the students were “obsessed with Mark McMorris.”
“They couldn’t stop talking about him,” she said. “We streamed his event live in the classroom when the Olympics were on and it was amazing.”
That kind of fascination is the way it’s going to be for McMorris from now on. He got a glimpse of that in Toronto, where he spent three days doing a media tour after returning from Sochi.
“It was crazy everywhere I’d go in Toronto,” he said. “There’d be a zillion girls waiting at like 4 in the morning for radio shows with Timbits and coffees.
“But they’re so nice and it’s so cool. All my fans are great, all the ones who have been there from the start and all the new ones. It’s a new chapter for sure with an Olympic medal.”
His performance in Sochi earned him a round of applause at the Regina airport from fans and other people who were there only to pick up incoming passengers. His showing also resulted in the appearance of several media members, which McMorris wasn’t expecting.
“It’s surreal,” Don McMorris, Mark’s dad, said of his son’s growing celebrity in Canada. “It’s all happening fast. He was popular before, but not to this level and he’s going to have to deal with it.
“I know he’s exhausted and he’s sick and he was kind of trying to fly under the radar coming home. Obviously, that hasn’t happened.”
Don McMorris said he and his wife, Cindy, were more nervous in Sochi than at other competitions because of the country’s expectations for their son.
Canadians who don’t view the X Games were watching the Olympics and that created a burden for Mark. For that reason, Don said, he and Cindy felt “pure relief” when Mark’s Olympics were over.
Now that burden has been replaced by a groundswell of support nationally for Mark, who knows, his life will be much different — even in his hometown.
“If everybody’s positively excited about what I’m doing, that’s really cool,” McMorris said of the impact the Olympics are having on his profile.
“It was crazy. You don’t necessarily realize the magnitude until you get back to Canada.
“You’re in the Games and it’s all cool. You see it all over social media and the Internet, but when you get back to Canada and all the people know and have literally been watching every second of it, it’s pretty cool.”
McMorris plans to rest and relax with friends and family in Regina before getting back on his board. His next event is expected to be the U.S. Open (March 3-8 in Vail, Colo.), by which time his rib will have healed.
That will be his first competitive step down a road that could lead to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Having competed in Sochi — where slopestyle was contested for the first time — McMorris’ Olympic appetite has been whetted.
“In our sport, we’re really lucky because we have such great careers with or without the Olympics; the Olympics is just icing on the cake,” he said. “It’s just kind of back to normal, doing it for the next three years and then the Olympics will show up again and it’ll just ramp up.
“It’ll be exciting. I’ll hopefully be there.”