No losers on a memorable Olympic halfpipe, but Scotty James gets silver behind Japan’s Yuto Totsuka

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — The best snowboard contest in history came down to one trick. Half a spin, really. 

Scotty James built up speed, launched himself above the coping of the halfpipe and took his Olympic hopes and dreams for a twirl through the clear, night sky Friday. 

He was trying what snowboarders call an “NBD” — Never Been Done — because on this night, in this contest, that’s what it would take for one of the greats in this sport to win the gold medal that barely eluded him at the past three Games. 

He landed on his backside at the end of that fateful 1620-degree spin — a half a rotation more than he’d ever done before in a contest. It left him holding a second Olympic silver medal while Japan’s Yuto Totsuka won the gold one that Australia’s best snowboarder was dearly hoping for. 

On a night that will be remembered for the history and art created on that 22-foot-high tunnel of concrete-like snow, it’s only right to say there really were no losers. 

But the site of James kneeling on the side of the halfpipe after the fall, his head buried in the red boxing gloves he uses as mittens, then him wiping his eyes as he stepped onto the second-place podium to accept his prize, were signs of how much this meant to him. 

“To be honest,” James said, “I’m a bit numb.”

Totsuka parlays years of promise into a long-awaited title

Totsuka has known that feeling, too. 

The 24-year-old has spent years near the top of Japan’s ever-growing halfpipe dynasty, winning X Games and Dew Tours and world championships and throwing huge tricks with the best of them. 

But when the lights were the brightest, he wasn’t near the top. Four years ago in China, when teammate Ayumu Hirano finally broke through and broke the stranglehold Shaun White held on this sport for more than a decade, Totsuka was an afterthought; he finished 10th. That was one spot better than his placement in 2018.

But the story that led to this gold medal began that year, around the time of the Pyeongchang Games. That’s when, knowing where this sport was headed, Totsuka started working not just on landing a triple cork — three head over heels flips that Hirano used to win the gold medal in China — but on landing two of them, back-to-back. 

It was that combination of tricks — a pair of 1440-degree triple corks, one riding backward, the other going forward — that put Totsuka at the top of the standings after his second run. It placed the pressure on James. 

“There was a time when I was really thinking about giving up,” Totsuka said. “To be able to do two triples is something I’m quite proud of.”

The two triples won the contest. A list of tricks that didn’t might better explain where this 90 minutes of riding fits into snowboarding lore. 

—Where four years ago, Hirano was the only rider to land a triple in his narrow win over James (White finished fourth), this time eight of the 12 riders did it.

—Where triple corks with 1620 degrees of spin, not 1440, have mostly been unheard of, Korea’s Chaeun Lee, who became the first to land one in training about 16 months ago, tried it twice.

—Hirano, a favorite to repeat at Christmas, was a mere afterthought on this, the day before Valentine’s Day, having severely injured himself in a contest last month. Still, he wouldn’t have missed this. 

“I’m still injured,” he said. “I couldn’t do my best here. But I was happy to be here to represent Japan.”

—Hirano’s Japanese teammate, Ruka Hirano (not related) and Cam Melville Ives, the 19-year-old from New Zealand, were the other two who landed not one, but two triple corks in their runs. 

Ruka Hirano stood there with a look of shock when his score posted and it was one point less than another teammate of his, Ryusei Yamada, who won bronze without a triple, but was so spinny and precise, he was hard to deny.

“I think there were a lot of tricks that none of these athletes had ever landed in competition before,” said White, the three-time champion who was on hand and had picked Totsuka to win the night before. “It was a wild night. Overall, I’m so happy for Yuto. He definitely crushed it.”

Triples put pressure on James to do the run he wanted, now needed, to do

Totsuka’s triples left James with a choice before he dropped down for the 36th and final run of a three-run final involving 12 contestants. 

He could try to redo his second run, the one that put him in second place, maybe due to just the slightest of speed checks after a triple cork at the top. 

That run finished with a pair of backside 1440-degree spins, one going forward, the other going backward. 

Less than three weeks ago, that was an “NBD” until James did it to win the X Games and give his sport a preview of what was to come. 

But what he really wanted to do — and now, felt he needed to do — was pull that last spin around another half revolution. 

“I wasn’t necessarily thinking about making history,” James said. “But that was the run I personally came here to do”

A fall led to two very different scenes in the stands

A cable cord suspended over the halfpipe snapped in the middle of James’ decisive run, swinging down and hitting a child in the face. The kid said he was stunned but fine. James said he never saw it. 

He was locked in on that final 180 degrees. His inability to put it down led to a pair of scenes across the snowpark that were 180-degree polar opposites. 

In the stands, fans waving Japanese flags celebrated their medals, their past champion and their new one. They cheered for their four riders, all of whom landed in the top seven.

“Ayumu has been both a hero and a rival to me,” Totsuka said, in explaining the way Hirano’s victory four years ago broke a glass ceiling in this sport and in his country. “Now he inspires me, and everyone else.”

Meanwhile, outside the blue fencing, as their son winded his way through dozens of interviews, Celia and Phil James waited with blank stares and a few tears. Scotty, now 31, moved to America when he was 12, trying to squeeze more out of the potential he knew was there. 

He changed the game on the halfpipe, focusing on technical riding more than sky-high tricks. That 1620-degree difference-maker was the foremost example of that. It was a trick he’d landed dozens of times in pre-Olympics practice. Just not when it counted the most. 

“All week long, he said he’d do his best,” Celia said. “But, I think he wanted that gold. I think he doesn’t think he did his best. That’s the hard part. I feel devastated for him.”

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AP Sports Writer Joseph Wilson contributed to this report. 

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics