‘Like a Hurricane in the Air’
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Version 0 of 1. FORT QU’APPELLE, Saskatchewan — From the tee box of the fourth hole, Mark McMorris could spot the small green hill in the distance where, as a young boy, he spent most of his winter weekends snowboarding. Mission Ridge Winter Park has 292 vertical feet of terrain. The stripe up the side was a new triple-chair lift, but it used to be a T-bar. “Seven minutes up, 30 seconds down,” McMorris said. The man most likely to stop the usually unstoppable Shaun White from achieving his Olympic goal — two gold medals at February’s Winter Games in Sochi, Russia — McMorris was about an hour’s drive from his hometown, Regina, which might be the flattest city in North America, if anyone cared enough to rank cities by urban elevation changes. From where McMorris grew up, the horizon in all directions was a straight line, far away, separating field from sky. It is a world that seems built in two dimensions, not three. To McMorris, it is a tired story line: boy from the prairie conquers the mountains. But there is something unusual in it, he will grudgingly acknowledge, a bit like being a ski racer from Kansas. And spend a few days with him at home, and it becomes clear: He is rather proud of his flatland roots. Forced to make their own mountains, in a city where the largest inclines are freeway exit ramps, McMorris and his older brother, Craig, would shovel snow from nearby parking lots into a pickup truck, and then unload it into the yard. They built mounds to give themselves downhill momentum for aerial tricks off whatever they could find scattered in the snow — patio furniture, old tires, the mailbox. Ten years ago, McMorris was one of many Regina youngsters who flocked to a Pizza Hut parking lot on a February day to ride down a 10-foot wooden hill. With the temperature well below zero, a newscaster asked 9-year-old Mark McMorris if he minded the cold. “I just like to snowboard,” McMorris said from underneath a floppy red stocking cap. “I don’t care what weather it is.” But now he is 19, the favorite to win the gold medal over White and all the others in the inaugural Olympic snowboarding slopestyle event, and his feelings about Regina and Saskatchewan have changed. “The best place ever in the summer,” McMorris said. “Worst place ever in the winter.” Not quite a slogan to put on a “Welcome to Regina” sign. “I couldn’t think of a worse place — it’s so cold, windy, the snow is terrible,” he said. “And it’s flat.” But it was summer for a short while longer, and there was no place McMorris would rather be. The next six months promised only pressure, strangers piling on expectations like children shoveling snow from a pickup truck. McMorris hit his tee shot with the natural grace of someone who contorts and twirls his body for a living. He is not muscular and compact like many top snowboarders, including White, but more sinewy — more runner than gymnast. Under his Burton T-shirt and his boarder shorts, below his Red Bull hat and above his Oakley shoes, McMorris hid a growing collection of tattoos. The one on his left arm includes a skull, but also something far more subtle. There are, in irreversible ink, several sheaths of wheat. They represent Saskatchewan — in the summertime, at least, when the air is warm and the strain of the approaching winter seems far away. The Wow Factor There was no halfpipe in Saskatchewan. Halfpipe has become snowboarding’s showcase event in the past decade, but it remains an outlier among purists — a contest held in the concocted confines of a 22-foot-tall, man-made chute of ice. “You go to any resort in the world, and there’s 10 times more people at the jumps and the rails than at the halfpipe, if there is a halfpipe,” McMorris said. “A 10-year-old can start with a six-foot jump. They can’t go into a 22-foot pipe.” Slopestyle is the cool older sibling, grown organically from snowboarding’s origins. Riders negotiate a series of slippery handrails and several jumps designed to elicit enough airtime to perform an arsenal of tricks. Runs are judged, basically, by their “wow” factor. Few wow like McMorris. At the 2012 X Games, he was the first to land, in competition, a triple cork — essentially, three flips and four 360-degree rotations. “Kind of like a hurricane in the air,” he said. Because of McMorris, it is the must-have trick for slopestyle in Sochi. He guesses that about six competitors will be able to do it. White will probably be among them. White, 27, once dominated slopestyle. He won four consecutive gold medals at the X Games beginning in 2003, just as McMorris was riding 10-foot ramps in Regina parking lots. But then the Olympics added the halfpipe to its lineup, and White became a global mainstream icon by devoting himself to that discipline and winning the Olympic halfpipe gold medals in 2006 and 2010. With the addition of slopestyle, White is committed to winning two gold medals in Sochi in February. He remains the favorite in the halfpipe. But he has looked rusty in slopestyle the past two seasons — seasons dominated by McMorris. “I don’t think he’s my biggest competition,” McMorris said of White, mentioning several others he thought stood a better chance. “There’s so many good guys.” It is painted as a rivalry, and McMorris knows he will be peppered by questions about White. They are friendly but not close. Few competitors have close relationships with White, whose fame, hypercompetitiveness and age (he is now the oldest at most competitions) put him in a different social orbit. “The thing I think is so cool about Shaun is how he always has 10 times more pressure as anybody,” McMorris said. “And for him to deliver every time is pretty amazing to me.” So far, McMorris has shown a White-like coolness in big events, too, starting at a major competition in 2009 when he was 15. McMorris advanced through a series of qualifying rounds. “Then I was in the finals, dropping right in front of Scotty Lago,” McMorris said, referring to one of the top riders, a 2010 bronze medalist in the halfpipe. “And I was like, O.K., I think I can be a professional snowboarder.” Sponsors began to notice his style and polish. Jasen Isaacs, an agent, pursued McMorris through Facebook and Skype. “I saw video of Mark and was like, This kid’s going to be good,” Isaacs said. “He came out of nowhere and was doing all these tricks — with style.” McMorris won a World Cup event the next year and earned a slot in slopestyle at the 2011 X Games. He finished second, then first at a major event in Austria. During a video shoot that spring, he landed his first triple cork — a “backside 1440 triple cork” in the vernacular. He won the 2012 X Games with it, then had a record score of 98 out of 100 in winning again in 2013. Anything less than gold in Sochi — probably at White’s expense — will be disappointing. “A lot of people consider me a gold medal favorite,” McMorris said. “You want to fulfill those expectations.” Nonstop Off-Season McMorris stood on the field at empty Mosaic Stadium, Regina’s 30,000-seat home of the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. He wore his Red Bull hat and the No. 89 jersey of receiver Chris Getzlaf. “Hey, Mark!” a young man on the grounds crew shouted from a passing cart. It was an old friend. McMorris smiled and waved. McMorris had agreed to record a pregame introduction. He is a big Roughriders fan; at home, the team’s schedule was the only thing attached to the refrigerator door. “I’m Mark McMorris, X Games gold medalist,” McMorris said into a camera. His voice was flat, and it began to rain. A staffer politely asked for more enthusiasm. But McMorris’s speech rarely rises to the exclamation point level. “Come on, Rider Nation,” McMorris said, trying to elevate his voice with each take. “I think we know what time it is. Let’s bring them out.” Good enough. He was late to the Regina CTV affiliate to conduct an interview, via satellite, for a national news program. On the 20-minute drive across town, he passed the office of The Leader-Post, Regina’s daily newspaper. Two summers ago, it placed a news brief about McMorris’s winning a major snowboarding event in New Zealand below that of a senior lawn bowling event. It reminded McMorris how quickly things can change. “I think it’s really cool that people notice now,” he said. “And to have fans gives you more motivation.” McMorris has a gentle ease and politeness about him — a combination that could make teenage girls swoon and grandparents proud. When he smiles, his jaw unhinges wide enough that a thin slice of toast could slide between his teeth. But he is serious about not squandering the opportunity unfolding before him. He speaks of building “his brand.” He stops to write Twitter messages to his growing list of followers. (Last count, approaching 29,000.) He has the usual squad of image makers around him, as many action-sport athletes do, advising him on what to do, say and wear. This was supposed to be his off-season, but his world revolved at exhausting speed. He struggled to remember all the places he had been since the end of the snowboarding season. There was a snowboarding movie shoot, lots of photo shoots, time spent and obligations met in Aspen, Whistler and Squaw Valley. He had meetings at Burton’s headquarters in Vermont, a break in Cancún and talked of a late-summer trip to New Zealand for training. (McMorris went to Australia instead, but a hard landing badly bruised his heels; he recuperated in Hawaii.) He was days from attending the ESPYs in Los Angeles, where he was nominated for Best Male Action Sports Athlete. (He did not win. Maybe next year.) McMorris has flown more than 160,000 miles in each of the past three years. He is not good at sitting still. But at the Regina television studio, he sat still in front of the camera, smiling beneath bright lights as he listened to another question from an interviewer only he could hear. “We’re not necessarily best buds,” McMorris said. Ah, the Shaun White question. “But we say, ‘Hey,’ and we both want to get to the top of the podium.” Then he was off again, meeting a reporter and cameraman at his family’s condominium for another television interview. McMorris, in his Roughriders jersey, watched their game on television as portable lights were set up in the kitchen. Temporarily freed from obligations, at a nearly empty skateboard park in the heat of a late afternoon, McMorris took off his shirt. His skateboard seemingly attached to his feet by invisible wires, he leapt effortlessly on and off benches and rails. He sometimes flipped his board underneath him as he sailed down a flight of stairs and landed atop it and rolled away. He rode with cool confidence and no hint of fear. (And no helmet.) When he fell, he had a catlike quality of landing on his feet first, to absorb the spill. “I’ve always had air awareness,” McMorris said. Skateboarding came first, then snowboarding, then wakeboarding. When he was 14, McMorris finished second in the amateur “wakeskate” (no bindings) competition at the World Wakeboard Association championships in Oklahoma City. His brother, Craig, was third. He thought he would be a professional wakeboarder before snowboarding’s allure — including its unlimited potential terrain and tricks, and its pop-culture coolness — proved too powerful. “Any board that touches his feet — skateboard, wakeboard, snowboard — he’s always been incredible,” said Kashtin Schumacher, a childhood friend. Surfing is his latest pursuit hobby. McMorris dates the professional surfer Coco Ho. “I love that there’s no motor power,” McMorris said of surfing. “Not even a chair lift.” A gray-haired man on a bicycle rode through the concrete skate park. “Mark!” he shouted. “Facebook friend!” McMorris returned the greeting and laughed. Suddenly, from nowhere, six men arrived, carrying skateboards and camera equipment. They exchanged handshakes and hugs with McMorris and quickly began to film. It was a crew from MTV, spending parts of many months following McMorris around the globe for an eight-episode reality show scheduled for this fall. They had come straight from the airport. The McMorris Clan For now, but not for long, Don McMorris might be better known in Saskatchewan than Mark, his youngest son. “The recognition might be the same,” Don McMorris said. “But the popularity, it’s not even close.” He has been an elected member of the provincial legislature since 1999 and, for years, the province’s health minister. Now he is minister of transportation and infrastructure. Increasingly, he is known as Mark McMorris’s father. “It’s been a blessing,” he said. “You go to social events, and you don’t have to talk politics. They want to talk about Mark.” Don McMorris made his living running the family’s 2,000-acre farm outside Regina, growing canola, flax, lentils and wheat. His wife, Cindy, is a nurse, for years working in operating rooms at Regina General Hospital. They recently swapped houses, essentially, with another family — trading in their longtime home in Regina for one on the shore of Echo Lake, a 50-mile drive northeast. They bought the condominium in Regina as a second home, to combat the commute to work, especially in winter. Their two boys, Craig and Mark, are two years apart. Mark followed Craig through school and sports like a shadow, and the two remain companions. “My favorite thing in the world is to see how excited Mark gets to see Craig,” Don McMorris said. Craig is a member of the Canadian national snowboard team, with a shot at making the Olympics in slopestyle, too. He and Mark are mirror images on the practice slope, but Craig has few of the trophies his brother has earned. “Craig may be a better athlete, but he struggles in competition,” their father said. “It’s probably a mental thing.” Cindy McMorris said, “Inside, Craig would probably like to punch Mark’s lights out.” The MTV series is called “McMorris and McMorris.” Although it follows Mark’s schedule, Craig might be the star. “Craig’s about 38 times more funny than I am,” Mark McMorris said. But Craig was out of town when the crew arrived in Regina. After skateboarding, everyone met on the shaded patio at Earls, part of a casual restaurant chain, for cocktails. McMorris sipped a beer. Others consumed shots. McMorris had a recreation-league hockey game to play with his old friends, and Don McMorris, a fairly accomplished junior player as a teenager, agreed to suit up, too. The film crew followed. The idea was to have one of McMorris’s Regina friends and Ulrik Badertscher, an Olympic hopeful from Norway who flew in to visit McMorris for a couple of weeks, wear microphones and serve as coaches. Loosened by cocktails, they barked coaching clichés between sips of cheap beer. A red-faced rink manager suddenly appeared. Beer is not allowed on the benches, he shouted in disgust and anger, and he animatedly escorted the two coaches out of the back door of the rink. Cameras followed. The MTV producer smiled. But the hockey game was played seriously, and although checking was not allowed in the “adult safe” league, there were plenty of collisions and spills. Mark McMorris had spent the past two days skateboarding, zooming at high speeds on a Jet Ski and doing acrobatics on the family trampoline. It was easy to imagine one misstep ending the gold medal dreams of one of the world’s best snowboarders. “When what you do is dangerous,” McMorris said with a shrug, “maybe you don’t consider the danger of other, less dangerous things.” He was one of the best players on the ice. Until he quit to pursue snowboarding full time, McMorris was a center on top-level youth teams. He gracefully swooped behind the opposing goal. His father, rushing toward the crease, shouted his nickname. “Sparky!” McMorris slid a deft pass in front of the goal. His father stabbed it. It nestled against the post. “I thought you were going to put it in,” McMorris said to his father in the locker room minutes later, amid the energetic postgame chatter. “Did you hear me yelling, Sparky!” his father replied. The two sat side by side on the wooden bench, soaked in sweat, sipping cheap beers. Don McMorris removed his uniform and pads to reveal red, one-piece long underwear, something Santa might wear. Mark McMorris wore synthetic tights with an Oakley logo. It was dark outside, the days shortening in their steady march toward winter. McMorris would soon be headed to the mountains again, into the snow, building his brand and his expectations, preparing for the possibility of a gold medal that so many others presume he will win. But seasons change, and then change back again. Win or lose, gold or bust, McMorris will find his way back to his prairie home in Saskatchewan next year. There is no place he would rather be — in summer, at least. |