WHEN Team GB bosses called Billy Morgan into a room yesterday, Britain’s newest Olympic medallist thought he was in trouble.
After all, the previous night he’d been wheeled into the athletes’ village on a trolley after losing consciousness at a celebration party.
But no, Britain’s chef de mission Mike Hay – nicknamed ‘While The Sun Shines’ – told Morgan he’d be carrying the Union Flag at the Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony.
It capped the most newsworthy weekend for the Morgan family since Bill’s dad, a pyromaniac former Royal Navy engineer named ‘Mad Eddie’, accidentally shot himself in the stomach while setting up a booby trap to deter burglars.
And the flag-bearing honour, with Morgan balancing the pole on his chin, was a fair indication that the Big Air snowboard sensation had saved his bosses’ bacon.
Morgan’s bronze may have taken Britain’s medal tally to five, their best haul at a winter Games, but that was the bare minimum target and the lower end of expectations – especially as funding doubled to £28million over the last four-year cycle.
Of the other four medals, three came from a skeleton team whose success is as much about engineering as athletic skill, while the fourth was an American ringer.
Those medalists should all be saluted – from 19-year-old U.S-born-and-bred skier Izzy Atkin, to skeleton bronze winners Dom Parsons and Laura Deas, to Lizzy Yarnold, who became the first Brit to retain a Winter Olympic title.
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And from around the world were some sensational performances, including teenage American snowboard genius Chloe Kim and Ester Ledecka, the extraordinary Czech won gold at both skiing and snowboarding.
Yet there were plenty of British flops too, most notably the regularly horizontal short-track speed skating world champion Elise Christie and Eve Muirhead’s misfiring curlers.
And while Yarnold may be many things she is no people’s champion like the loveable rascal Morgan, a former roofer and a man who seems to have cracked life in a way few others manage.
His laidback attitude has more in common with the likes of topless Tongan flag-bearers and Jamaican bobsleighers.
Yet while Morgan ended the 2014 Winter Olympics after-party in Sochi with a toilet seat around his neck, this time he wore a medal as he was carted home in a luggage trolley.
“I was in bed pretty early,” he said, “I sent it too hard, too early. I peaked out. All the Kiwis got there and they were like ‘where’s Billy?’ and I’d gone.
“I don’t remember it but apparently I was taken back into the village in a trolley.
“Getting the medal was pretty crazy – it’s in my pocket. I’m going to try not to lose it.”
After winning bronze on Saturday, Morgan mentioned his father, who had suffered a serious stroke last year but is now able to walk again and, though his speech remains poor, is ‘enjoying himself, which is what is important to me’, says his son.
But the question remained: Why is Morgan senior nicknamed ‘Mad Eddie’?
“He just kind of like … he likes setting things on fire,” says Morgan in his deadpan snowboard dude’s drawl.
“He was just a kind of a nutter. He was into motorbikes. He’s a bit of a pyro. He’s just a bit of a loose dude.
“He did some crazy stuff in his day and he’s an engineer so he made some crazy stuff.
“He shot himself with a booby trap he made once. He was in the papers for that..”
This sound like a matter of pride for our Billy.
“Yeah,” he said “We had burglars come into our house. It wasn’t actually going to be a booby trap to hurt them, just to go ‘bang!’ and scare them off if they climbed over the fence.
“But, yeah, he shot himself in the stomach with a 12-guage cartridge.
He was like testing it out and fiddling with it and, yeah, he had to go to hospital.”
Morgan worked as a roofer and would have gone into the Navy like his dad and brother, Ashley, a helicopter navigator, had he not made it onto the British park and pipe team.
That was after three winters in the Alps, which he describes as ‘the good old days’ – as if winning Olympic medals and partying for Britain is rather tame by comparison.
While Britain’s most successful winter sport, skeleton, can seem elitist, Morgan is a working-class hero in a sport booming among kids.
Now the 28-year-old from Southampton hopes his success can help fund a freestyle ski and snowboard academy in Manchester.
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So what about the suggestions that our new favourite daredevil is in line for an MBE?
“What’s that?” he asks.
The honours list?
“I don’t know what that is.”
You’d have to go and meet the Queen, Billy.
“Oh no. That makes me anxious just thinking about it,” he says,”This flag stuff makes me nervous enough.”
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