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Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris will not compete in the men’s big air competition after hitting his head in a crash during training on Wednesday night at the Milano-Cortina Olympic Games.
McMorris was examined by Canada Snowboard and Canadian Olympic Committee medical teams and it was decided that the 32-year-old athlete will miss Thursday night’s men’s big air qualification as a precautionary measure.
In a social media post on Thursday, the Regina native said he still hopes to compete in the slopestyle event, set to begin on Feb. 16.
“I took a fall last night, I hit my head and I will not be able to compete in big air tonight, unfortunately,” McMorris said. “But fortunately, things are looking up for slopestyle, so [I’m] just trying to stay positive and shift my focus to that event.”
Brendan Matthews, Canada Snowboard’s vice-president of business development and partnerships, said McMorris was taken to hospital late Wednesday and released soon after.
McMorris, who won bronze medals in slopestyle in each of his three previous Olympics, spent the night at the Olympic Village.
“He’s up this morning. He’s feeling good,” Matthews said earlier Thursday, just metres away from the big air slope where McMorris went down.
Concerns were raised when McMorris was taken away on a stretcher but Matthews said that was routine after such falls. Still Matthews said it was worrying at the time.
“It always looks scary when someone takes a hard fall like that, but all things considered it’s good news,” said Matthews.
He called it a “freak accident,” saying McMorris actually landed the trick he was attempting when it happened. He just caught some loose snow with his heel edge and had a “hard fall.”
“In our sport, we like to call it a ‘snow snake’ that comes up and bites you out of nowhere,” Matthews added. “Just a little bit of loose snow that was on the slope. Nobody’s fault but unfortunately these things happen in an extreme sport like ours.”
McMorris’s crash highlights the inherent danger that comes with big air, which sees competitors at these Games travel down a 50-metre-high hill built on a scaffolding.
Last month in an interview with The Associated Press, McMorris was asked what the point of big air really was: “It’s an event that, you see it, and you just go ‘Wow!” he said.
Slopestyle qualification is set for Feb. 16 with the men’s final two days later.