FREESTYLE – AERIAL SKIING: David Morris is feeding off the inspiration from Lydia Lassila’s bronze medal performance to prepare for the men’s aerial skiing event at Sochi’s Extreme Park on Monday night (0:45am Tuesday AEDT).

The two-time Olympian is still in awe after Lassila’s ground-breaking full, double full, full – a quad twisting triple summersault – that saw her become the first woman in the history of the sport to use the jump in competition.

Morris said at the end of his final training session in Sochi that he is hoping to deliver a performance that will make Lassila “as proud of me as I am proud of her.”

“When I saw the jump she was doing- a full, double, full, full, I was pumped for her,” Morris said.

“I know how much that jump meant to her. Just to see her push the sport to a whole new level. That is such a big step up for female aerialists.

"I can’t do anything as crazy. To see someone want something so badly and go for a jump that she has done twice- and the conditions were not that perfect- I got goose bumps just watching it. I was so pumped for her.”

With a current world ranking of six, Morris cast his memory back four years to the lead in to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games and said, with a laugh, that things are “so different.”

Morris arrived in Vancouver with a ranking of 15 and a bag of jumps that were clearly incomparable with his broad range of tricks that he can draw on in Monday night’s competition.

“Four years ago I had done only seven full, double full fulls going into the Olympics,” he said.

“I had been putting off doing the trick because it was such a scary trick for me to do. I’d just learnt how to do it but now I have used it in every single competition. It’s now my standard trick.

“I’m now a much more confident jumper, I don’t sort of panic too much anymore.

“I’ve gone from making sure the jumps were safe to launching the biggest jumps I can do because I’m better at stretching.

“I’ve learned a lot and used all the good parts from it.

“I’ve got more confidence in myself. A couple of years ago if I had bad training, it would affect my competition. Now I’m like, OK the next jump could be the best of the day.”

Morris does not usually train the day before a big event, choosing to sleep in, hydrate himself sufficiently, eat well and relax. So while other aerial skiers trained on Sunday, Morris stuck to his normal routine of missing the last session in a quest to improve on his 13th in Vancouver.

Morris’ day on Monday will start at start 4pm with a short inspection of the course and speed checks, before an on-course warm up.

The first qualification session for the starting field of 25 athletes will commence at 5.45pm (0:45 AEDT Tuesday). The structure is the same as the women's contest- the top six in the first qualification session advance directly to the first final.

The remaining 19 will do battle again in the second qualification, which will see the best 6 from the second qualification session also going through to the first final of 12.

The top scoring eight athletes move into the second final, which is then trimmed to a four-man super final to decide medallists.

While Morris has the ability to get among the medals, other top contenders will be the Vancouver Games bronze medallist Zhongqing Liu from China and compatriot and current World Champion Guangpu Qi.

Defending gold medallist Alexei Grishin and his veteran Belarus team mate and two time Olympic medallist, Dmitri Dashinski, 36, are hoping to add to their country’s gold medal success in the women’s event.