Unbroken: The Snowboard Life of Mark McMorris Page #3

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Those things are gonna happen.

What am I doing?

Why am I even snowboarding?

What is this (bleep)?

If this is what

it's taking me to?

But then, I think,

I think as everything

progressed slowly over time

and they started

to take tubes out,

and I started being

able to use sh*t,

it got a lot better for sure.

Stopped having those negative

thoughts about the sport

that did everything for me.

(sniffling)

He was feeling down one

evening in the hospital,

and I was just sort

of reassuring him,

you're gonna be okay.

You're gonna get through this.

And he said, "Yeah, I'm

going to the next Olympics."

So, no, even lying in the

hospital bed in agony,

he still has that determination.

Your body goes through

that much trauma,

getting out of

all the surgeries,

metal from the

bottom to the top,

"Can I go to the Olympics?"

(laughs)

I just wanted to know I

had a chance to go there.

And I was pretty impressed

with from day one to nine or 10

how much it had progressed,

and how I could

legitimately talk,

and I didn't have tubes

feeding me anymore.

And as soon as they're not

feeding you through a tube,

they try and get you out

of there pretty quick.

(brooding music)

Can I give you like a...

Burt, baby.

C'mon give me a little chest

(laughs), does that hurt there?

No.

Did you break a few ribs?

Six ribs in my back.

Ohhhh.

I'm so lucky.

People gave you up for...

I know...

He gone.

Yeah, "He gone."

(laughing)

When I went to see Mark

after his latest little run-in

with a tree, we hung

out and it was different

because he really

messed himself up.

And the easiest thing

is to be the victim.

But, he was himself and

he was dealing with it.

So were you trying

to hit the tree?

[Mark] Dude, no, it sucked.

[Jake] Did you cry?

No.

(laughing)

I was passed out for a

second when it happened,

and then when they were

just like yelling at me

pretty much, wanting

to know I was stable,

and just like,

"The heli's coming,

"keep breathing,

keep breathing."

Having Jake coming

to visit was so cool.

I was definitely moving slow,

but I definitely could walk

and pretty cool to have

people that support you

in your journey,

but also support you

when the journey's

not going well.

It wasn't athlete Mark,

"I'm the finely-tuned machine,

"ready to go out and destroy

a slopestyle course."

It was just a person,

who was overcoming

an incredible injury and

dealing with a lot of pain

and disability

throughout his body.

Pretty crazy what

he even asked me.

He was like, "Do you even

wanna do this anymore?

Don't feel any sort of

pressure from us or anything.

We're here to support

whatever decision you make."

Pretty cool to know.

It's not just a

business relationship.

It's way more than that.

I knew how competitive the

Canadian slopestyle team,

just getting on that team

for the Olympics, was.

And I knew how focused

he was on that.

You could feel in his soul

that he was just focused on

getting better and getting

back to what he wanted to do.

Okay, here we go, get

into the recovery mode.

Every morning I wake up,

it's the worst thing ever.

It's just like the whole

side all the way down.

It's hard to breathe

a lot of the time.

When I talk, I just have

to stop and regain myself.

Yep.

There's a concern, there's

a fundamental concern.

I've known Mark

for a lot of years,

and when I looked at

the list of injuries,

he was discharged extremely

early from the hospital.

It's tough for you because

sitting hurts, standing hurts,

walking hurts, lying hurts.

Yeah, I just hurt,

so much stuff that

there's no safe place.

Yeah.

Wasn't his first

significant injury.

We've been through

the fractured femur.

We've been through a broken rib.

So, it's like, okay,

let's understand

the extent of what

the injuries are.

Yeah, you don't

have great blood flow.

I think it was his dad that

told me the first thing

that he came out was

kind of, "I'm okay."

And the second thing

that came from him,

"Does Damo think I

can do the Olympics?"

Which is pretty

powerful in terms of

where his mindset

was at immediately.

Oof.

This hurts so bad.

(groaning painfully)

I don't think I'm convincing

myself that everything's fine,

but I qualified for the

Olympic team already,

and know I had a

chance to go there.

[Damien] You ready, bud?

[Mark] Yep.

Okay.

[Damien] Just easy.

Little squat, but

the key thing is

I don't want you

holding your breath.

So just little movement

through the hips.

Breathe out as you move down.

Don't hold your breath,

even if it's cold.

The process of getting back

is, you're gonna get sore.

You're gonna have to go

through the same thing,

and get sore again, spend

a lot of time in the pool,

a lot of time working on my arm,

a lot of time just trying

to stabilize my core area

and my torso, which

took such a beating.

[Damien] Okay, let's come

out, go in the hot tub.

Oh my God.

[Damien] Hold on,

hold on, hold on.

I know.

[Damien] It's coming.

Damien is really good at

getting you back to snowboarding

but the rehab I needed to

be doing one month post

to the tree incident

wasn't in the gym stuff.

You want to heal and

allow bones to heal,

allow yourself to get over

the aspects of recovery

from surgeries.

Once he was clear to fly,

he really wanted to

be back in the sun.

We're going back to Cali,

and I'm super happy the

collapsed lung is good to go.

He knew it was

a long road ahead,

so cleared the expectations

and allowed that initial

couple months to be just

about rebuilding the capacity

to potentially snowboard again.

As long as I can go back to

where I've been at one point,

I'll be really happy.

The demands of international

elite competition.

We didn't know if he was

gonna get there or not.

It's an unknown.

I'm gonna hold here, and

then you pull towards you.

To where you feel

a good stretch.

When I saw him the first time,

I mean he just, he is frail,

moving very slow, I mean

he was like an ancient man.

Shuffling around the house.

Oh my god is this so stiff.

I have such a hard

time sitting down.

The first couple weeks

were definitely brutal.

It was challenging

just to see him

in the place he had to

go to really open to heal

and understand that he might

not be able to snowboard.

We don't have a crystal ball.

We can only think the best

and try to be positive

but there's really

no clear path.

I was just super

bummed on everything

and like was so

over feeling pain

and I had so much

nerve pain in my back

and I was just

angry at the world.

I was just mad.

It was so challenging

coming back from like zero.

Yeah.

It was really a lot about

focusing on what he could do

instead of what he couldn't do.

She was so good at being

positive and I loved her energy

and the way she would work

on me and slowly try and like

get me to like use my hips and

try and like sit on my ankles

and stretch out my back.

I worked with Amanda

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