Four years ago, Billy Morgan ended his Winter Olympics experience dancing at a party with a toilet seat around his neck. In Pyeongchang, however, his partner will be a shiny bronze medal.
“It’s a bit of an upgrade,” the hugely likeable 28-year-old joked after his shock podium finish in the big air competition. “From the lowest of the low to having a medal.”
In a world where sport personalities are media trained to say nothing and hide everything, Morgan is a hurricane of fresh air. Afterwards he said he liked partying to distract from the “scary shit” of charging down a vertigo-inducing hill before flinging himself off a giant ramp, and that he prepared for the final by “blazing through the forest” on an electric scooter. Deep down, he also thought he was lucky to win bronze.
Yet when the pressure was deepest, Morgan delivered. After falling in the first round, he scored a solid 82.50 in the second, followed by 85.50 on his final run after landing a front-side 14 triple with mute and tail-grab for a combined score of 168.00. “I tried that last trick four times in practice earlier and fell on all of them,” he said.
That moved him into bronze behind Canada’s Sebastien Toutant, who eventually took gold with 174.25 points, and the American Kyle Mack, who was second on 168.75. Yet Morgan still faced an anxious wait while his rivals with bigger tricks up their sleeve stepped up.
However, after Max Parrot had landed on his beak, Morgan knew bronze was his, and that GB Park & Pipe team had secured their second medal of the Games following Izzy Atkin’s ski slopestyle bronze.
“I pushed all the fear to the side on that last jump,” Morgan said. “I was like ‘even if I completely wreck myself it doesn’t matter, I’m going to go and do it’. But I was lucky. A lot of the guys out there would normally hammer it and I didn’t come in thinking I’d do this well. It’s blown my mind.”
Snowboarding is regarded as a sport for the well off, but Morgan is a working-class lad from Southampton who used to work on building sites to pay for his trips to the Alps. “I loved working on the sites,” he said. “I did a bit of roofing and I learnt loads of stuff. I almost miss it, getting my shirt off, working on the roofs. And this is the pay off.”
Four years ago, Morgan was expected to be a medal contender in Sochi but blew out the ACL in his right knee. And, when he injured ligaments in his other knee in December, he feared his Olympics were over. But after nearly two months out of action, Morgan recovered just in time – while his rivals lost their nerve.
Afterwards, he dedicated his victory to his dad, Eddie, who suffered an aneurysm last year. “He’s a big part of my life and I had to go home a lot when I should have been training,” he said. “He’s come a long way and he’s at the pub watching.
“He’s called Mad Eddie, and he’s nuts. A lot of my dad’s friends say I’m obviously his son. My mum is straight laced and by the book. My dad is completely the opposite.”
Morgan might have been the oldest competitor in the final – but at heart Billy is still a kid. “I come from the last generation of snowboarders who get away with partying,” he said. “I use it as a distraction. I get scared a lot and I worry about it and it does help to have a couple of drinks, relax and not think about the scary shit I have to do.”
Great Britain snowboarding coach Hamish McKnight hopes Morgan will inspire a new generation of British athletes – but agreed his friend was a little unconventional. “Certainly he shows you don’t have to be a cold-hearted machine to be an Olympic medallist,” he said. “Billy is absolutely crazy and will always be. He should never change. Why should he?”
When McKnight was asked about the toilet seat incident in Sochi he laughed. “Which one was that?” he said. “It was one of many. Almost none of my stories about Billy I can tell you – that sums him up best.”
Does he party at the right times, came the next question. “Yep,” said McKnight, deadpan. “He parties at the right times. And the wrong times. But he is very conscious of when he needs to be in the right frame of mind, so he tends to pick and choose when to party. The problem is really that his definition of ‘party’ is a bit further than anyone else’s – and his definition of big parties …”
At that point, McKnight was dragged away by a Team GB official. Morgan’s medal means Team GB have achieved the target of five medals set by UK Sport. And, with a result like that, you imagine it won’t be only Morgan partying hard in the coming days.
