McMorris ready for weekend's big air World Cup in Beijing
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E-mail Xinhua, November 23, 2017
BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Canadian star snowboarder Mark McMorris resumes Olympic quest after life-threatening accident, getting himself ready to come back to Big Air World Cup at this weekend's Air+Style event in Beijing.
The 23-year-old, an Olympic slopestyle bronze medalist in Sochi 2014, crashed into a tree during a backcountry film shoot in Whistler, B.C., Canada last March.
"Obviously I got injured very bad. So, it's been a long summer. I've been rehabbing back to where I was," said McMorris after eight months of intensive rehabilitation.
He broke just about everything and needed multiple surgeries to repair a fractured jaw, shattered left arm and ruptured spleen, besides a pelvic fracture, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
"Now I feel like I'm finally there and looking forward to continuing and getting back to more podiums," added the Regina native, who's working at a rehab centre in Burnaby, B.C., with the goal of recovering in time for the Pyeongchang Olympic Games in February.
It's not the first time that McMorris had been seriously injured. He sustained a broken rib a few weeks out from the 2014 Winter Games, and fractured his right femur in February, 2016 and had a metal rod surgically implanted in his thigh.
The Canadian rider still claimed a successful snowboard season carrying those pains, having won three X Games medals and two Crystal Globes, one for the new Olympic discipline of Big Air and another as the Overall FIS Snowboard Freestyle World Cup champion for 2016-2017.
At his first Big Air World Cup of this season after coming back from injury, McMorris will be joined in Beijing by the other ESPY award winner Anna Gasser of Austria, who also won X Games medals as well as the Big Air and snowboard freestyle overall World Cup title.
In the season-opening Big Air World Cup in Italy, Gasser triumphed earlier this month to make herself again the female rider to beat.
The Air+Style Beijing, having been held for seven straight years since 2010, is upgraded this year and joins the FIS Snowboard World Cup tour by hosting this season's second Big Air event in the Worker's Stadium, rather than in the Chinese National Stadium as the previous ones.
Reigning Big Air world champion Staale Sandbech and other big names like Sebastien Toutant, Roope Tonteri, Seppe Smits and Niklas Mattsson will also hit the show.
A newly recognized FIS-A official event, the Air+Style Beijing World Cup is also the qualification event and points race of the 2018 Pyeongchnag Winter Games. Enditem
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