How the judges will decide Scotty James’s halfpipe fate

Source : ABC NEWS

In the lead-up to one of the most hotly anticipated events at this year’s Winter Olympics, Scotty James says winning a gold medal will not “validate” who he is as a snowboarder.

But it is the one thing that he does not have in his medal cabinet and, at 31 years old and in his fifth Olympics, this could be his final chance.

The men’s snowboard halfpipe final is arguably one of the biggest ticket items in the entire Games and the eyes of the world will be fixed on this picturesque northern Italian valley.

The rumours are that everyone is about to throw down something incredibly special.

“I think, for the first time in quite a long time in halfpipe, it almost could be anyone’s day,” Valentino Guseli said after the epic qualifying campaign.

“But Scotty’s got some stuff that’s pretty insane and pretty hard to beat.

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“I know if I do my best stuff then I could potentially be up there, but yeah, I’ll have to do some pretty good riding, I think.

“The Japanese guys have way more … I don’t know.

“It’s going to be crazy and it’s hard to speculate on.

“But I think all you can do is watch and see what happens and enjoy the show.”

If James has got something special planned for the final, he is not letting on just yet.

“I’ve learned over the years that my lips should never be looser than a wizard’s sleeve when it comes to tricks in the halfpipe,” he said earlier this week.

If qualifying proved anything it is that the field is absolutely stacked heading into the final.

One of the most remarkable series of runs ever to take place at an Olympic Games took place at the Livigno Snow Park on Wednesday night, which saw James claim the top spot heading into the final.

In Beijing it took two historic triple corks from the Japanese megastar Ayumu Hirano to take the gold ahead of James.

Even then James was adamant that there was more to life in the pipe than triples and that his sublime technicality should be rewarded.

In part that’s down to his height — it’s far harder to complete a triple when you stand at 185 centimetres. Hirano is just 165cm tall.

So James has to think outside the box.

“My plan this year, regardless of the results, is to try and revolutionise halfpipe snowboarding in the way I would interpret it,” he said earlier this week.

“It’s obviously subjective, but I wanted to push it in the direction that made me excited to go up there and push it.

“I feel like I’m snowboarding the way I want to snowboard and, fortunately, being rewarded for that.”

Subjectivity is obviously key in this.

As with any judged sport, athletes can only do so much. It’s the six judges that will ultimately determine James and Guseli’s fate and those of all 12 finalists.

And, under extraordinary pressure from both time and occasion, judges can make understandable mistakes.

One of the six judges for the halfpipe in Livigno is Slovenian Iztok Šumatić, who was head judge at the controversial slopestyle competition in Beijing, where a missed knee-grab was credited as a board grab and helped give American Max Parott gold.

The others are Great Britain’s Gaz Wessman Vogan, Sweden’s Fredrik Westman, Switzerland’s Andrin Regli, Julien Haricot of France and Japan’s Ryo Hashimoto.

The same six judges were in the booth for the World Cup event in Laax last month, where James won gold and Guseli bronze.

Overseeing those six is Australian Adam Begg.

Begg has been in snowboarding for more than 30 years and got into judging after a severe injury kept him off the snow in 2000.

He first judged internationally in 2006 and has is now officiating in his third Winter Olympics.

Speaking to ABC Sport earlier this week, Begg outlined the key things the judges were looking for to score a run.

“With halfpipe, we base [scoring] off five major criteria, which is progression, amplitude, execution, variety and difficulty,” he said.

“And then it’s just a mix of them, so we’re looking to make sure it’s a well-rounded run.

“I guess for people at home, amplitude is an easy one to quantify because it’s how big they go out of the halfpipe.

“And the other one that’s really easy to see, if you’re not experienced with the sport, is execution — so whether they put a hand down, fall over, grab, long or short. It’s those sort of things that we try and look forward to discern between the runs.

“For us, difficulty comes in spins, and progression is whether it’s been done before in the halfpipe or whether that combination links well.”

So how is James going to catch the eyes of the judges?

For a start, he is pushing his ability to ride switch — with the non-dominant foot forward — and backside, with his back facing down the pipe.

His winning run at the recent X Games, albeit in a much reduced field as many of the sport’s best chose to stay in Europe to hone their skills, featured a switch backside 1440 into a backside 1440 — four complete spins.

Those tricks had never been seen before in combination in the Aspen Superpipe.

“Sometimes I feel I sound like a broken record when I talk about what’s technical in the halfpipe and how I’m pushing it,” James said.

“There’s still only a handful of guys that are really doing switch backside riding.

“This year the majority of the field is doing two backside hits with three frontside hits, because that’s the direction they’re pushing.

“This Games, I’m doing two frontside hits with three backside hits. So that’s how I interpret it to be more technical, more difficult, more demanding physically.”

As to whether the judges will agree with James’s sentiments, only time will tell.

The men’s snowboard halfpipe final gets underway on Saturday morning at 7:05am AEDT.