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BEIJING, Nov. 23-- 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 2017, 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 2017 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. | 
