David Morris wins silver medal for Australia in men’s aerials

AUSTRALIA, meet your first new medallist at these Sochi Winter Olympic Games whose name is neither Lydia nor Torah.

AUSTRALIA, meet your first new medallist at these Sochi Winter Olympic Games whose name is neither Lydia nor Torah.

He goes by the name of David Morris and he just won a silver medal in the men’s aerials by landing an incredible four straight jumps perfectly while those around him crumbled.

#TEAMOUTCAST DAD PULLS HIS HEAD IN

“I basically just closed my eyes and waited for the ground to come,” the ecstatic Morris said in describing the quad twisting triple somersault which secured him a silver medal.

Morris is a superstar in the making. Everyone in Sochi is just buzzing about the energy and personality of this guy.

David Morris of Australia competes in the Freestyle Skiing Men's Aerials Finals on day ten of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

But the 29-year-old almost never had a career at all in aerial skiing. David Morris is the fish Australian winter sports authorities tried to reject.

For years he applied for a scholarship at the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (OWIA). For years they turned their back.

OWIA chief Geoff Lipshut admits he didn’t support Morris initially.

“I made a bet with the staff that if Dave got a medal at the Olympics then I’d have to admit I was wrong,” he said with admirable if sheepish honesty.

All the same, you were wrong Geoff.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

So wrong in fact that other countries began circling. Winter sports powerhouses Switzerland and Canada tried to entice the skier who grew up skiing among the snowgums at Mt Buller, to compete in their colours.

Australia's David Morris jumps during the men's freestyle skiing aerials final at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park.

Morris, a proud Melburnian, wouldn’t have a bar of it. The reason?

“He wanted to represent Australia first,” his dad Shane says.

“He was actually asked to jump for other countries at one stage but he just wanted to compete for Australia.”

When Morris finally secured some prized OWIA funding after having to jump all kinds of hurdles which our ladies’ team never had to clear, he made it to the Vancouver Olympics, where he finished a mediocre 13th.

Afterwards he almost gave up the sport.

“The lowest point was in 2011. I busted my hip up in a competition and I trained through it and kept jumping and it nearly ruined me,” he recalled.

“The injury got me and I wasn’t prepared for the rehab and I basically quit the sport, took a year off, just went ‘I’m outta here’.”

Silver medal winner David Morris of Australia jumps during men's freestyle skiing aerials at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park.

“Then I took time off and decided I wasn’t finished. I worked my butt off, I started from the very very bottom of the field again and had to earn back every privilege. I was just so demanding and so angry all the time.

“This tops it off, I don’t know what to say.”

Morris took to gymnastics and skiing before the age of five, but was unaware of the aerials discipline until former world champion Kirstie Marshall happened to visit his gym for a presentation night.

Marshall offered to coach Morris for free in the town of Lilydale on the outskirts of Melbourne. The rest is Olympic history.

The four-man final in the event had strong echoes of the ladies’ final two nights earlier, with two Chinese athletes, a Belarussian and an Aussie.

But Morris’s trip to the final was a lot smoother than Lydia Lassila’s. While Lydia crashed her first jump and had to make the final 12 the long way round, Morris breezed straight through.

That’s when things started to get a little tight.

As 12 was reduced to eight, Morris squeezed through in eighth place. When eight was reduced to the so-called “super final” of four athletes, he again claimed the last available spot.

Silver medallist David Morris of Australia celebrates after the Freestyle Skiing Men's Aerials Finals.

Phew. Just snuck in.

But then, that’s Dave. He doesn’t have the biggest jumps. But as he says himself, he sticks them more regularly than most.

“To be a little bit modest, I’m a good lander, I always have been, it’s never been an issue for me,” he said.

Under the rules of aerial skiing, the athlete with the lowest score has to jump first in each new round. That means less time to recover, but it also means less time to think about your jump.

That might sound like a handicap, but it actually played straight into Morris’s hands. Talk to David Morris and he’ll tell you he hates overthinking things up there on the hill.

He’s worked extensively with a sports psychologist to help him stay in a zone halfway between relaxed and focused.

David Morris of Australia celebrates after his final run in the Freestyle Skiing Men's Aerials Finals.

“I don’t perform well when I’m not switched on but I also don’t perform well if I’m too hyped up and too tense and stressed,” he said.

So here’s the scene you had at about 11pm on a Russian mountain last night.

You had an athlete who needed to be switched on but not too switched on. On edge but not too edgy.

You had a guy whose best jumps weren’t as tricky as some of the top guys in the field, but who has been ranked as high as world number two because he regularly sticks his landings.

You basically had the ultimate game of tortoise versus hare. Morris the plodding tortoise, always there, just quietly doing his thing. His competitors were all hares, sometimes brilliant, sometimes fast asleep.

“At the start of my career, I was so busy trying to do the perfect jump but it’s not really possible in our sport,” he said.

Silver medallist David Morris of Australia.

“I realised before I’m not the best jumper out there, and if I can’t jump perfect, I just want to get it right. I just want to do a nice one.

He did that, all right.

The atmosphere in the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park was electric as the final four took to the hill.

Much of the noise was made by Morris’s dad Shane, mum Marg and brother Peter in his spectacularly ugly yet undeniably awesome suit with alternate green-and-gold pants.

The Russian crowd played their part too. They’ve been terrific at these Games.

Morris went first. His was a nice one, just like he said, but nothing too spectacular. He scored 110.41. The Belarussian went next, scoring a whopping 134.5.

Then came the Chinese, both of whom crashed. They’ll be calling them Chinese chokers back in the People’s Republic today.

Silver medallist David Morris of Australia celebrates during the flower ceremony for the Freestyle Skiing Men's Aerials Finals.

And that was that. Silver to Morris

The upshot of all this is that an Aussie who is the favourite athlete among just about every one of his 59 teammates, is now the holder of just our 12th Winter Olympic medal.

It was quite a night, and a beautiful follow-up to Lydia Lassila’s bronze, after the 32-year-old unofficial team matriarch had provided all sorts of encouragement and advice to Morris.

“Well, she set the bar pretty high and I just had to take it a little further, didn’t I,” Morris laughed.

Australian aerials skier Lydia Lassila celebrates David Morris of Australia winning silver in the Freestyle Skiing Men's Aerials.