Coming out swinging is snowboarder’s style
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA >> Australian snowboarder Scotty James’ trademark is a pair of red boxing gloves he wears on the slopes.
The gloves are a tribute to a national symbol of Australia, the red-gloved boxing kangaroo.
But the gloves also personify the Melbourne 23-year-old: pugnacious, flamboyant and always ready to rumble.
The gloves say, he said, “I’m Scotty James and I’m here to play.”
Indeed, James arrived at the Olympic Games swinging.
At two-time Olympic half-pipe champion Shaun White.
At other snowboarders And especially at the sport’s judges.
The gloves and all they stand for will be on display at the Olympic half-pipe finals Wednesday (today on the West Coast) at Phoenix Snow Park.
James is the gold medal favorite and has spent much of the past two weeks reminding judges, reporters and White of that.
James’ complaint with the judging is twofold.
James signature trick is a switch backside, double cork 1260 in which he makes a blind entry into 3 1/2 rotations and then makes a blind landing. He is the only person to land the jump in competition and he insists he has not been adequately rewarded for that by the judges.
At the same time James argues that judging panels have inflated White’s scores. Example A, James said, is White’s perfect 100-point score at last month’s Toyota U.S. Grand Prix in Colorado, an event in which James was second. It was only the third time a rider has been awarded a perfect score. White and Chloe Kim, the teenage superstar out Torrance, both posted 100-point marks at the 2016 U.S. Grand Prix.
“I was just curious,” James told reporters, as to why the judges gave White a perfect score. “Personally, and I have spoken to a lot of other snowboarders, it’s pretty tough to get a perfect score. I didn’t agree with that at all.”
White won’t be James’ only competition. Japan’s Ayumu Hirano, 19 and the silver medalist at the Sochi Games, is the first man to land back-to-back 1440s.
James took up snowboarding at age 3, initially riding a mini-snowboard that had been on display in the window of a Whistler ski shop. He father talked the owner into selling the board to him for $10. A dozen years later, James was back in British Columbia, at 15, the youngest athlete at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and Australia’s youngest male Olympian in a half-century. James finished 21st, the same place he took four years later in Sochi.
A year later James had a breakout season, winning the 2015 World half-pipe title.