Australia's Scotty James wants Olympic halfpipe gold badly. If he wins it, he'll do it his way

The Olympic gold medal is the last and only thing missing from the resume of the man who might be snowboarding's final great renegade - Scotty James. The Aussie halfpipe rider wants it dearly. He has called that missing gold ''the elephant in the room.'' He has literally risked his life over the last 10 - make that 20 - years to try to get it. But does he need it? Is winning it in Friday night's Olympic final the only thing keeping him from the list of the best of the best in the history of a sport that was built by iconoclasts but has started feeling more corporate in recent years? Or is he already on that list? ''Winning an Olympics would be amazing. I don't think I need it to validate who I am as a snowboarder,'' James said. ''I think I'm doing that just by the way I ride my board and how I interpret riding myself.'' For years, James has been cinching on his trademark red boxing gloves, stepping to the top of the halfpipe and stubbornly insisting on not getting caught in the ever-growing trend of more flips at the expense of everything else. While the defending champion, Ayumu Hirano, and Shaun White before him worked on the vaunted triple cork - three head-over-heels flips that stands as the sport's most dangerous trick, and the one that wins the biggest contests - James doubled down on complex twists and turns and doing things while riding backward. In snowboarding, they call it ''style.'' Nobody does style better than the 31-year-old rider who grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Warrandyte, then left his family and moved to America with Aussie snowboard greats Torah and Ben Bright at age 12, knowing he had maxed out all his possibilities back home. Riding with style takes sacrifice, not only because it's hard but because the reward isn't always there. Riding a snowboard backward and starting a twist facing up the hill, completely blind to the landing spot, might not look as huge as a triple cork. Most in the sport would agree it's more difficult. Over a career of close calls and near misses in the biggest events, James has watched judges - all of them lifers in this sport - value his skills less highly than the big jumps. He has famously picked fights with judging panels: like the time they awarded White a perfect 100 at an Olympic qualifier in 2018, which led James to feeling he had no chance to win gold, no matter what he did at the Pyeongchang Games. He has famously been passed over: At the Beijing Games, he conducted a clinic in technical riding on the halfpipe at Secret Garden but got edged out by Hirano and his triple cork. James has amassed a record-tying eight X Games halfpipe titles, five wins at the prestigious Laax Open, four world championships, the bronze and silver from the Olympics and so much more. This might be his last, best chance to finally win Olympic gold. ''My plan this year, regardless of results, was to try and revolutionize halfpipe snowboarding in a way that I would interpret it,'' James said. ''Some of this is subjective but I wanted to push it in a direction that made me full, made me excited to go out and push it.'' In the leadup to the Olympics, all these riders keep their cards close to the vest. The biggest clues from James came from his win at the X Games last month, where he landed successive backside 1440-degree jumps. That's two tricks spinning with his back facing down the hill to start, one while riding forward, the other riding backward - or ''switch.'' Snowboarders like to call that an ''NBD'' - never been done. In the Olympic qualifier on Wednesday that was stunning for the level of the riding, James started his second run with a triple cork. Considered revolutionary four years ago, it now looks like the price of admission to the podium. Though it's not his favorite trick - not by a longshot - James has one (maybe two) in the bag for Friday. But if he wins - a result that feels more possible because Hirano is coming off a big injury, although far from certain because of the depth of Japanese riding and the sudden surge from New Zealand's Cam Melville Ives - it will not be because of triple corks, or, frankly, anything else anyone is doing. It will be because he did it his way. ''The plan doesn't change for me regardless,'' James said. ''I have a run in my head that I want to do. It will be a good final.''