Snowboarder recovers from horrific accident to win Olympic medal
In March 2017, Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris laid in a hospital bed with fractured ribs, a fractured left arm, pelvis, and jaw, along with a ruptured spleen and collapsed left lung.
On Saturday, less than a year after he slammed into a tree while backcountry snowboarding, McMorris claimed an Olympic bronze medal in the men's slopestyle event.
"I’m trying not to think too much about the past today," he said to reporters after his improbable victory. "A lot of times I need to pinch myself. There have been some low times, but these high times make it worthwhile."
McMorris, who won his first bronze medal in slopestyle during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, went into his final run knowing he'd probably missed out on the gold medal.
He could've attempted a less difficult performance, but according to the National Post, the 24-year-old decided to attempt a daring jump: a backside triple 1620, which involves three flips and four-and-a-half rotations.
Though he's previously landed the maneuver, he came up just short this time.
"It’s worse when you play it safe and it doesn’t work out,” he said at first, then seeming to reframe his achievement. "It did work out. I probably shouldn’t even be here, so I’m pretty stoked."
And no doubt viewers are pretty stoked for McMorris as well. It's not every day you get to celebrate an athlete who's one of the best in the world -- and inspires the hell out of you.
Topics Olympics
Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
