Parrot wins slopestyle for Canada's first gold of Olympics, McMorris earns bronze

After a battle with cancer just over three years ago, Canada’s Max Parrot came back even stronger.

Parrot stood atop the men’s slopestyle podium on Monday, capturing Canada’s first gold medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics, one step up from his silver-medal finish at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games prior to being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The 27-year-old snowboarder from Bromont, Que., was diagnosed in December 2018 – forcing him to miss the entire 2018-19 season to undergo chemotherapy. After 12 rounds of treatment, he beat the disease, and by August 2019 he was back riding and winning at the X Games.

Now the seven-time X Games gold medallist has done it on the Olympic stage – a shining example of resilience and an embodiment of the Olympic spirit. Even Parrot recognized the magnitude of what he’d just achieved.

“For the past four years, a lot of things have happened, with my diagnosis with cancer, beating cancer and then with COVID,” said an enthusiastic Parrot with a Canadian flag draped around him after winning gold. “So many challenges for the past year, and to be up here with the gold… it means so much.”

To make matters even more remarkable, teammate Mark McMorris, who earned bronze to give Canada two medals in the event, has a triumphant story of his own.

In 2017, McMorris suffered life-threatening injuries when he hit a tree while backcountry snowboarding in Whistler, B.C. The Regina native spent time in a Vancouver ICU with a collapsed left lung, a ruptured spleen, a fractured jaw, a fractured left arm, a pelvic fracture, and rib fractures.

After two successful surgeries, McMorris eventually returned for the 2018 Games, where he also earned bronze. The 28-year-old is now a back-to-back-to-back bronze medallist in men’s slopestyle, having previously finished third at the Sochi Games in 2014.

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Parrot’s near-perfect second run earned him a 90.96 score that proved too much for anyone to catch.

Coming in second was China's Su Yiming with 88.70, while McMorris claimed third place with 88.53 points in his third and final run – tossing his snowboard in the air in celebration afterwards.

Canada now has four medals at the Beijing Winter Games – one gold, one silver, and two bronze.

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