Mark McMorris on top of snowboard world again

There's not much time to relax when you're the top-rankedsnowboarder in the world.

Mark McMorris's brief visit home for the holidays included a plug for a ski hill in Saskatoon, his own McMorris & McMorris Gala for charity in Regina, a quick trip to his old stomping grounds at Mission Ridge, Christmas with the family, then back to the grind byBoxing Day.

• McMorris brothers snowboard in Saskatoon for fundraiser
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When I tried the same trick, I was very, very, very scared- Mark McMorris

McMorris has made a remarkable recovery considering it's only been 10 months since he broke his right femur at a competition in Los Angeles.

"That sucked.I've never been injured like that. That was definitely on a different level of injury I've ever experienced." said McMorris, who spent the next six months recovering with a titanium rod in his thigh.

"I worked my butt off because I really wanted to come back and I came back pretty strong and won two events before Christmas. It's nice my leg works, my mental in competition is still there too so feels good."

One of those events was the Olympic test in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

He won it by landing a front-side triple cork 1440 mute, the same trick he was attempting to do when he broke his femur in February.

"When I tried the same trick, I was very, very, very scared." McMorris admitted while lookingvery, very, very proud of himself when talking about the moment when he finally nailed the trick.

When McMorris returns to the snowboard circuit in 2017, he will do so sitting on top the World Tour rankings witha comfortable lead on fellow Canadians Max Parrot and Sebastien Toutant.

Parrot and Toutant will be McMorris's competition for one of two spots on the national team, which will be handed out at the end of this winter for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Snowboarding will take on a larger profile there; big air has been added to accompany slopestyle for the 2018 games.

"If I can get into one of those two [Canadian] spots, that would be huge. Then less stress in 2018."

But before that, there will be the World Cup in Switzerland in January, which leads straight into the X Games.

"Then it's every weekend boom, boom, boom."

That is the life of a world-elite snowboarder whose face also sits on the cover of a video game, Infinite Air, which was released in 2016.

"That's such a trip. Right place, right time.I was lucky to have success at the right time because they turned to me to have my name on it;it was just a dream come true."

Not bad for a 23-year-old from Saskatchewan, which is not exactly a tourist destination for alpine sports.