Morgan bronze secures record medal tally
Great Britain have secured their highest-ever medal tally in Winter Olympics history after Billy Morgan won bronze in the men’s snowboarding big air.
The medal won by the 28-year-old is the fifth won by Team GB in Pyeongchang, taking them past the previous best of four medals won in 1924 and in 2014 in Sochi.
It is GB’s fourth bronze after Dom Parsons, Laura Deas and Izzy Atkin, while Lizzy Yarnold took gold.
Morgan made sure of bronze by nailing a trick that he had never done before in competition, and had crashed doing in his last four attempts in training on Saturday morning.
His success earned the 28-year-old former acrobat an unlikely place in history as the man who guaranteed Great Britain their best Winter Olympics with a fifth medal of the Pyeongchang Games.
Morgan had crashed on the first of his three jumps, meaning it was imperative he landed both his next two in an event in which the medals are decided by the cumulative total of their two best scores.
He nailed his problematic big trick - which he described as a "front-side 14 triple with mute and tail-grab, but essentially a triple cork frontside wipe" - to score 85.50 which put him into the third place on 168.00. It was a position which, despite 10 athletes still to go, remarkably sustained.
When Canadian Max Parrot fell on his final run, ruling him out of contention, Morgan's extraordinary achievement was confirmed, sparking wild celebrations amongst his support staff at the foot of the jump.
"I didn't think I could win a medal," conceded Morgan. "I had Torgeir (Bergrem) and Max to come and they're rad riders, they never fall over - and they did. I had some good luck on the day but that's what makes the sport so interesting - you can do a trick 100 times but fall on that day."