Denny Morrison Website

By: Shi Davidi, THE CANADIAN PRESS 23/12/2009 1:42 PM

Denny Morrison's first memories of being on the ice are of chasing his mother Carol around at parent-tot skates in Chetwynd, B.C.

He was only three so the recollections aren't that vivid, but he can picture himself learning to jump the lines at the local rink with both his mom's help and urging. Not that he needed it.

"Lots of times we'd have the whole arena to ourselves, so there was lots of space for fun and learning," Carol recalls. "I would play little games with him, I'd say we'll jump all the lines and when we get to the red lines we'll stop and turn around, that sort of thing.

"He loved doing it, and picked it up quickly. I remember thinking to myself that he could already jump the lines, and a lot of the time I would just skate over them."

Still, she never imagined then that those might be her determined son's first strides toward becoming a world champion speedskater, not to mention a force to be reckoned with at the Vancouver Olympics.

Morrison's on-ice path started to take shape at age four, when he joined the local speedskating club because there were no hockey programs for kids his age. A couple of years later, after the family moved 200 kilometres northeast to Fort St. John, he strapped on the sport's specialized elongated, unrockered skate blades for the first time and hit the ice. He was hooked.

Photo: Dennis Morrison, Morrison photo-album

Hockey just never caught his fancy after that.

"I don't know why I didn't get into hockey," Morrison says in a recent interview. "My parents offered every year, 'Do you want to sign up for hockey or speedskating?' I always liked speedskating.

"I thought it was kind of cool being a speedskater amongst a bunch of hockey-playing friends growing up. I didn't really get that there was a big hockey thing."

There's no doubt now he made the right decision, one that could pay off in a big way come February. The 24-year-old heads into the Games as a favourite to win medals in the men's 1,000, 1,500 and team pursuit events.

His goal, of course, is gold. His makeup and very intense competitive nature wouldn't have it any other way. Things, however, are never that simple and coach Marcel Lacroix praises him for focusing on the right things.

"If you think about the outcome or the possible reward of a gold medal, well you're not thinking about what's needed to get there," says Lacroix. "He understands that in order to win he needs to concentrate everything into training and his preparation."

With Morrison that's never a problem. For him the issue has been, and sometimes remains, reining in the fierce competitiveness that's driven him since childhood.

Aside from speedskating, Morrison also played soccer, basketball and volleyball while growing up, dropping the other sports as he made more and more progress on the oval.

Skating wasn't always his favourite pursuit along the way, but he loved the success he had at it. When he was 10 years old and won the North American championship for his age group, his path was pretty much set.

"I was like, 'Hey, I'm the best in North America,' even though all the best skaters in North America probably weren't there," he says laughing. "But I was like, 'I bet I can beat everyone in the world. I should go to the Olympics.' So that's when I got my mind reeling and decided I wanted to go to the Olympics one day.

"It kind of became my goal."

Helping in that regard was that older brother Jay, also a member of the national team and a candidate to skate in Vancouver, was excelling at the sport, too. Right in his own home, he had an example to chase after.

"Jay was a huge role model for him," says Carol. "Jay began winning Canadian championships, breaking Canadian records when he was only a bantam (9-10), so Denny kind of grew up with that. Knowing there were records out there and that this is what Jay does, Denny figured it would be what he does, too."

There were a couple of other major draws for him: the speeds he could reach on the ice, and the individual nature of the competition.

"I've always been a bit of a speed freak and just competitive," says Morrison. "Speedskating is not a team sport, you don't have to rely on teammates to either win for you or be good enough to help you win. It's all just you.

"I used to actually like short-track speedskating better because there's more contact, action, but then I fell into long-track because it's just yourself and your strength out there. There's not a lot of chance. It's cool for someone competitive like me to just go out there and do what I do, prove that here's where I stand without luck or chance."

Morrison decided at 17 to focus full-time on long-track skating and after he graduated from high school, he moved to Calgary to chase his dream. A self-professed gearhead, he also picked up a little toy along the way that brings him both joy and frustration to this day.

"I worked construction the first summer out of high school before I moved to Calgary, then I got carded and I felt like I had this influx of money so I was like, 'I'm going to buy a sweet car,"' he says of his 1991 Dodge Stealth.

"Just a few months after I bought it, it started breaking down on me and it hasn't quit."

The Stealth is still with him in Calgary, although it's no longer his one true love (he says he used to travel with a framed picture of it). He bought an Audi S4 after the world championships last spring to use when he's at his place in Richmond, B.C., and splits his time between the two cities.

Besides, the Stealth isn't always reliable.

"It's on jack stands right now," he says. "Me and my dad (Dennis) have had the engine out of it twice now. It's actually on its second engine and third crank."

As much as Morrison loves working on his car, he knows now is not the time for hobbies. The only thing he's fine-tuning at the moment is his racing on the ice.

Frustrated by a slow start to the current season, he ditched his skates and blades in favour of the pair he wore during the 2007-08 season, when he was world champion in the 1,500.

The switch wasn't nearly as straight-forward as it sounds, since the blades on those skates are almost completely gone. He put them aside knowing there might be just enough left to get him through a couple of months if he couldn't find a comfort level with a new pair, and when he had problems with his set-up this year, he pulled out his ace in the hole.

"It's nice to be able to step on my skates, step on the ice and be comfortable in my equipment," says Morrison. "Before, I couldn't focus on my racing because I was concerned about my equipment, if it would give me what I wanted from it.

"I think I can ride them through to the Games, no problem."

The other card he still has up his sleeve for the Olympics is his competitiveness. While it can be challenging to harness it the right way, particularly when trying to pace oneself for the gruelling laps around the ice, that will win to win comes in particularly handy at the end of races, when skaters are, in their vernacular, about "to die."

That often happens in the final few hundred metres of a race, when lactic acid in the legs has built up and the body is on the verge of being unable to give any more.

"That's when you need to use (the competitiveness), to grit your teeth and get into it to finish that race as hard as you can," says Morrison. "Especially in the 1,500 metres. Speedskating is one part power, one part efficiency, and one part technique, and to maintain that technique and that efficiency when you're hurting so bad ... it's not an easy thing."

In that sense, it's a bit like driving the Stealth he loves so much. Gun it too often, and all the fuel gets burned up before the destination is reached, but hit the accelerator at just the right times and you get where you're going in good time.

"He uses his power very well and since he was a junior, he's been polishing his technique and when he's technically sound, with his power, he achieves incredible results," Lacroix says of his athlete on the ice. "Right now he's got a good combo going."