LIVIGNO, Italy — Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris said he’s “coming around and starting to feel like myself again” after suffering a concussion and pelvic injuries during a nasty fall in training on the big air course before the Milan Cortina Olympics started.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, McMorris said he lost consciousness when he fell eight days earlier during training for the contest that opened the action at Livigno Snow Park last week.
“We’ve been doing a lot of different tests and taking all the necessary steps to make sure I’m in good shape,” he said. “I’m thankful to have passed all those tests and, at the end of the day, to be feeling good and feeling confident to get back out there.”
McMorris, 32, winner of bronze medals in slopestyle at the last three Olympics, said he checked out the slopestyle course Thursday and will move forward with his training this week. Slopestyle qualifying for the snowboarders is set for next Monday.
Even though the injury knocked him out of big air, he said “very much so” when asked if his goals for slopestyle were still intact. McMorris won his 12th X Games title last month and is considered at the top of the list of medal contenders.
The dangers of snowboarding have been in plain view at these Olympics, the biggest stage for a sport full of daredevils who fly dozens of feet in the air and go off-axis with jumps and flips. The injury suffered by McMorris, one of the sport’s most popular and successful figures, cast a shadow over the opening days of action in Livigno.
In women’s halfpipe qualifying Wednesday, China’s Liu Jiayu suffered a grisly fall when she caught an edge on her landing at the bottom of the course. Her head snapped to the ground and the momentum propelled her legs and back over her head — a wreck that’s called a “Scorpion” for the way it resembles the arachnid when its stinger is raised.
Liu received treatment for a head injury but suffered no major injuries to her spine.
McMorris said he caught a dreaded “snow snake” — a near-invisible chunk of snow or debris that wedges under the board — and took a tumble that led to an abdominal strain, bruising at the top of his pelvis and the concussion but no fractures.
It added to a list of injuries he has suffered both on and off the course. His worst accident was a near-fatal slam into a tree during a backcountry run in 2017. Doctors had to induce a coma to save McMorris, who broke 17 bones, ruptured his spleen and suffered a collapsed lung in that wreck.
“It’s definitely a dangerous sport, definitely part of the sport at times,” he said. “I just try to be calculated with the risk, mitigate it as much as I can. I’ve been lucky the last couple years to be healthy and I’m happy to not have had a worse hit than I did have. It’s unfortunate it came when it did, but fortunately it’s going to be OK for slopestyle.”