Mark McMorris On His New Oakley Signature Goggles And Upcoming X Games, Natural Selection Tour

He’s a veteran of slopestyle snowboarding, a three-time Olympic medalist and one of the most heavily sponsored professional snowboarders in the industry.

But at 29 years old, Mark McMorris is far from the tail end of his career. In fact, the Canadian is at the forefront of progression in slopestyle and big air, continuing to set the bar for the generation coming up behind him. In so doing, his success both on the snow and off it has provided a blueprint that the young guns would be lucky to follow.

Unlike some of McMorris’ friends who play in the NFL and NHL, snowboarders don’t have seasonal contracts with guaranteed money. And while the lowest-paid players among the 1,600-plus who have NFL contracts make, at a minimum, $705,000 per season, snowboarders have to piece together contest podium positions, sponsorship and endorsement deals, speaking engagements and all manner of avenues to support themselves.

“You kind of create your own structure in a way,” McMorris told me by phone in late December.

“It’s hard to make a really good living; you have to be in the top 20 snowboarders in the world,” McMorris added. “But we’re so lucky. All these guys, my friends that play in the NFL or NHL, have been to Europe like one time in their life, or Japan never. I’ve frequented these places the last 15 years and I’ve made a great living off snowboarding.”

The sport is expensive for the athletes, with the frequent global travel and the gear. It’s also expensive—sometimes exclusionary—for amateurs and weekend warriors.

“Working on the accessibility side of snowboarding, bringing parks into the cities, is a huge goal for myself right now, giving back in that sense,” McMorris said. He’s been working with Burton on the brand’s Mystery Series, worldwide events that are open to all riders and focus on community and progression.

In snowboarding, any athlete’s “big three” sponsors are their hard goods sponsor, their outerwear sponsor and, traditionally, their energy drink sponsor. McMorris has worked, respectively, with Burton (hard goods and outerwear), Oakley (eyewear) and Red Bull for more than a decade, inking those big-name partnerships at the tender age of 15.

With his latest signature goggles from Oakley—his seventh—dropping this month, it was a natural time to check in with McMorris and preview his upcoming season.

McMorris’ first signature goggles came out just after the 2014 Sochi Games—his first Olympics, in which he took bronze. (In fact, McMorris took bronze—or “rose gold,” as his brother, Craig, would say—in the 2018 PyeongChang Games and 2022 Beijing Games, as well. Being podium perfect in three Olympic tries would be a dream for some riders, but for the ultra-competitive McMorris, he hasn’t quite gotten where he’s looking to go. More on that later.)

McMorris’ goggles incorporate Oakley’s popular Line Miner frame, which has a large fit and features what many snowboarders would call the ultimate peripheral vision. It also includes Prizm lenses, Oakley’s proprietary technology that enhances color and contrast.

“The Prizm lens is now cemented in the google side of things in snowboarding,” McMorris said. “That’s just gonna give you the enhanced view you’re looking for; it makes flat light feel not so flat. And then the Line Miner is a simple frame with a lot of peripherals, and it pretty much lines up with every helmet in our industry as well.”

In McMorris’ chosen disciplines of slopestyle and big air—which, at the top end, see riders performing five full rotations (1800) and two or three off-axis flips (double or triple cork) while hurling themselves off massive jumps—having a perfect fit between helmet and goggle is essential. “I’m wearing a helmet all the time and pulling so many Gs spinning and flipping,” he said. “I can’t have my goggles moving around on my face.”

In part because of where the sport has gone on the competition side, sometimes looking more akin to gymnastics, McMorris says goggles have begun to trend larger, with riders wanting as much downward and side-to-side periphery as possible.

“When I first started on Oakley I’d wear this crowbar frame that I didn’t think I’d ever change,” McMorris said. “But the peripheral views in the Line Miner are amazing and I’ve seen it change over the years firsthand. A lot goes into how the goggle looks, but at the end of the day I’m a pro athlete trying to perform and performance has a huge play in it all.”

When you’re as good at snowboarding as McMorris, you’re going to have a lot of on-camera time—so you may as well look good doing it.

Leading up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics, McMorris was rocking a kit that included head-to-toe lilac with his Burton AK Hover jacket and AK Freebird Bib. Even the base of his cambered Family Tree snowboard was wrapped in the purple shade.

His 2022 Oakley Line Miners—no surprise—featured a purple frame and a white strap.

“It was tough for me to give up the purp,” McMorris said with a laugh. “I was enjoying it. I’m always trying to communicate with Oakley and Burton about what my goggle’s gonna look like and hopefully [Burton] can add something in there that coincides with my goggles.”

Heading into 2023, McMorris will be clad head-to-toe in powder blue Burton outerwear, and his new signature Line Miner features a brown strap.

The tricky thing about designing goggles, McMorris says, is that they’re “baked pretty much a year our”—meaning he has to forecast trends a little bit. He was right on the money (when isn’t he?) with the lilac, which also featured heavily in Chloe Kim’s 2021-22 hard and soft goods and her own signature Oakley goggle. It looks like he’s on trend again with the earthy brown.

“Earth gives me a lot of things, a lot of pleasures—it’s pretty easy to give it up for the earthy tone,” McMorris said. “With lot of things I’ve been into and colorways that have been catching my eye with artists and athletes I like in different industries, I’ve been seeing this brown pop up a lot.”

After McMorris started wearing the new goggle right around X Games in January 2022, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with people coming up to him and asking how they could get their own.

“On the aesthetic side of things, I’m really lucky in the sense that I have really good relationships with all my brands and longevity with my sponsors,” McMorris said. “Burton knows that I’m Oakley eyewear, Oakley knows I wear Burton hard goods and outerwear. I’m the messenger and I definitely want to have my outerwear look good with my goggles—and then I always have a Red Bull can on my head.”

So McMorris has got the kit and the goggles dialed heading into 2023—how about his riding?

Fiery competitor that he is, McMorris was visibly and verbally frustrated about earning his third bronze in the Beijing Games to close out the 2022 season, though he was sure to follow up with words of praise for gold-medal-winning Max Parrot, his Canadian countryman.

McMorris came into the Olympics on a high note, having won his 10th X Games gold medal (and 21st overall) in January and a record-breaking sixth slopestyle contest, edging out Shaun White for the most ever.

“The thing about slopestyle that makes it so interesting and so hard to continually be on top is it’s not a 22-foot pipe; you don’t do the same run week in and week out. It’s always changing,” McMorris told me in Aspen following his win this past January.

McMorris won X Games gold with a run that included a switch backside triple cork 1620 stalefish, a frontside triple cork 1440 Weddle and a backside triple cork 1620 Indy on the jumps section.

At the Olympics, it also took two 1620s on McMorris’ best run (which was also his last, as he sat just out of podium position at fourth) to bump Red Gerard out of third place and finish with—yet another—bronze.

McMorris will be 32 when the 2026 Milano Cortina Games are held; young for the world, but a grizzled veteran for snowboarding.

And the major injuries he’s withstood—a broken rib ahead of the Sochi Games in 2014 and a near-fatal collision with a tree in the backcountry in 2012, leading to a shattered jaw, punctured spleen, collapsed lung and more—make it even harder for his body to compete with what a teenager’s can do with ease. (Su Yiming, who took silver in Beijing, considers McMorris an idol. He’s 18.)

Indeed, most people watch snowboarding with commentary overlaid and never get to hear what’s actually going on as athletes try to twist and contort themselves in the air. In a recent behind-the-scene videos in which he’s mic’d, McMorris has offered a glimpse into his inner monologue—sometimes funny, sometimes frustrated—as he throws a 1620 or an 1800.

The grunts and other guttural noises that emerge from the typically soft-spoken McMorris’ throat as he dips his shoulder to whip his body around in multiple 360-degree spins just underscore how difficult this discipline is—how much training and gym time goes into it off the snow.

In the video, McMorris also consults with his crew about which tricks he should attempt—an easier frontside spin with a triple cork, or a harder backside spin with a double?—and generally lets viewers into his typically inaccessible inner circle.

Despite his veteran status, McMorris knows that he can still hang with the best—for the time being. And as long as that’s true, he’s not stepping away from competition any time soon.

Heading into the 2022-23 season, McMorris will return to X Games to see if he can earn a 22nd medal—which would break his tie with Jamie Anderson for the most in the contest’s history.

He’ll also be returning to Travis Rice’s Natural Selection Tour, a freeride-focused competition that allows him to show off his varied snowboarding skills, where he’s as at home on powder and natural features as he is on a big air jump.

“I know I still have the tricks and the motivation to want to still do well,” McMorris said. “I’m gonna take it one year at a time, compete a bit this year and next year and figure it out. If I still feel like a real contender, I’ll go for the next [2026 Winter] Games. There’s so much water to go under the bridge season by season and day by day.”

Why keep risking major injury—even death—when sponsors at McMorris’ level have increasingly shown that they’ll continue supporting their athletes even if they step away from competition and focus more on filming and other lifestyle projects?

Simple. “I love to win,” McMorris said. “I love to do my best. If your best still can win or podium, then you should keep chasing that feeling because it is so rad when you ride to the best of your ability and you have that moment.”