Pipedream over: James settles for second Olympic silver
Melissa Woods |
Never has silver felt so deflating with Australian snowboard great Scotty James falling short in his quest to complete his Olympic medal collection at the Milan-Cortina Games.
Competing at his fifth Olympics, James became Australia’s most decorated winter athlete with three medals, winning another silver after Beijing as well as the bronze he won eight years ago in PyeongChang.
He was also part of the country’s most successful single day, his second place coming after Josie Baff clinched gold in the snowboard cross earlier in Livigno.
But it was mostly disappointment with James shedding tears and being comforted by Australia’s canoe great Jessica Fox when she presented his medal.
Leading into the Olympics he had openly declared gold was his “north star”.
“It’s a bit numb, like I don’t really know how to feel,” the 31-year-old said.
“The next 24 hours I’ll probably have a bit of a cry, but I’ll be happy as well because representing the country and winning a medal is unbelievable, and I’m really proud of that.
“I think what I can live with is that I tried my best and tried to do a run there on the last run – that was my aim here and I was unable to land it, and yeah, it’s on me.”
James was the last rider into the halfpipe on Friday night and needed to improve on his second run score of 93.50 after scoring 48.75 on the first run despite a fall.
He had already locked in the silver medal with the second trip down the pipe that included a switch backside 1440 directly into a backside 1440 combination – the only rider ever to complete the sequence.
But instead of trying to better execute that run, he attempted a new trick – a backside double-cork 1620 – for the first time in competition and fell again.
That handed the gold medal to Japan’s world No.1 Yuto Totsuka, who scored a whopping 95.00 on his second run while his countryman Ryusei Yamada bagged bronze with 92.00.
James had no regrets, saying he wanted a statement run.
“Potentially I could have done it with a 14, but for myself, I had to do the 16,” the 31-year-old said.
“I wanted to push it, and that’s what I was here to do, regardless of the result.
“I think my first run, if I landed that, I think the medal would have been a different colour. The last run was kind of for me, but yeah, it’s hard to look at it like that because I can’t change the result, but yeah, it is what it is.”
Australia’s other competitor in the Livigno final, Valentino Guseli, also crashed twice but showed his immense talent on his last run, scoring 88.00 to finish fifth.
It improved his position in the final one spot from Beijing with the 20-year-old recovering from a ruptured ACL to compete in Italy.
“Well, on the first two runs I sucked, but I landed my last one and I got one place better than I did in the last Olympics, so we’re going up, which is cool,” Guseli said.
“I wanted to land that run that I did last perfectly on my first run and then keep upping it and I had some ideas of how I was going to do that.
“It didn’t end up happening, and yeah, that’s life.”
