SCOTTY JAMES IS looking as relaxed as ever as he gets up from a table to greet me in a meeting room at Red Bull’s HQ, in Sydney’s Alexandria.
It’s July and James has spent a week completing media commitments that have ramped up ahead of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, which began over the weekend. His brother and manager, Tim, is sitting beside him tapping away on a laptop, as James addresses the elephant in the room: finally winning gold in the men’s halfpipe at this year’s Games.
James has previously described the accolade as the missing piece of his ‘pool-room collection’, one that includes a bronze medal in 2018 at PyeongChang, silver in Beijing in 2022, four world championships, four World Cups, 11 Winter X Games golds and three Laax Open wins, the most recent of which came just over two weeks ago.
“If I was to win a gold medal, I would obviously be very proud,” says the Red Bull athlete, whose recent Netflix documentary Scotty James: Pipe Dream, took viewers behind the curtain of his storied career. “It’s been a great journey and I’ve been fortunate enough to win two other medals that are a different colour. I feel very grounded this year and have a great team around me. I feel like my prep’s been awesome, I’ve got some great new tricks that I can bring to the table and I think it would mean a lot. But do I think it would define me and my career? No, and I think that’s the right approach to have because the big picture is important, but naturally, as a competitor, of course, I want to win.”
James is right. Given the success he’s enjoyed over a glittering 18-year career, not winning gold would not define his career. But imagine if he won. A gold medal in Milan-Cortina would be a crowning achievement.
The stakes are high, but James is so self-assured, has so much confidence in his ability and belief in himself, that he’s somehow able to maintain perspective. Unlikely as it might seem then, he enters these Olympics as that most dangerous of men: the one with nothing to lose and everything to gain.
MEN’S HEALTH: It’s an Olympic year. How are you feeling?
SCOTTY JAMES: I would say everything is more amplified. When the Olympics come around, the Australian media and sponsorships, there’s just a little bit more hype, which makes sense because it’s obviously a big event. Generally, it’s a bit busier than a normal year, so you need to maximise it but also find a balance to stay on top of your priorities.
MH: Would you like it if it was like this every year?
SJ: Yeah, I think I feel like it’s a big part of my career to be honest. I feel a sense of responsibility almost. As Aussies, we’re very few and far between in winter sports, but in our respective disciplines, we’re some of the best, if not the best. I’m trying to use my career as a way to try and enhance that, I hope for everyone, not just myself.
MH: You had an amazing year in 2025. What would you say is driving your success right now?
SJ: Last year was a great year. I was very happy with the results. I set out to want to win the events that I was able to win, which is great. It was a product of the preparation, which is awesome. Obviously with the Games coming up I would love to win, but I want to win every event. So, it’s always my motivation when I’m away from the mountain to see what I can do better to put myself in the best position to do that. And besides the accolades, I have a lot of drive and motivation to do tricks that have never been done. My drive isn’t just purely about winning and losing, it’s also about what I’m doing in the sport, that’s evolving it. I have a lot of incentives across the board, which keeps me driven to want to be better.
MH: Where does your competitive drive come from?
SJ: From the experiences in my career and what it’s taken to get here. What keeps me most motivated in that sense is that I reflect on my journey, which brings me a lot of purpose. The time and effort that my parents put in when I was young means I’ve got a very strong ‘why’ to continue to keep pushing and going for it.
MH: You’ve talked previously about ‘Mookie’, your alter ego, who reflects your competitive side. Do you have to switch him off away from the half-pipe?
SJ: To be honest, I try and be Mookie as much as I can because he’s the most playful, outgoing character and that’s when I’m at my best. When I start to get too serious and focused on the results, it’s not the right way to approach. So, I very rarely switch it off. If anything, if I’m not Mookie then I’m probably heading down a path where I need to try and figure out how to come back to be more Mookie again. The right time to switch him off is when I’m asleep in bed at night and I need to go to sleep.
MH: At 31, you’re a veteran in your sport. What’s an advantage of age on the half-pipe?
SJ: The advantage for me is I feel like I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge over the years. I feel like I’m very strategic. I don’t go too much too soon. I know when to go and when to push and pull, whereas some of my other competitors feel they’ve just got to go all the time. That’s probably just something you learn as you become wiser and it obviously helps when you’re talking about taking risks. You’ve got to be mindful of when to do it. I would say just having the knowledge and the self-awareness of when to do things is probably the biggest benefit that I have with age.
MH: What do you do in the gym that helps you in the half-pipe?
SJ: I do a lot of core work, a lot of core strength and unlike a lot of people that do interviews for Men’s Health, I never do anything with my arms. The smaller my arms are, the better. The smaller my chest is, the better. Everything below that is prioritised. You’ve got to have strong legs. So, I do a lot of leg strength work. I do a lot of core work. And then the last one, because it’s actually a passion in my life, is cycling. I do a lot of cycling, obviously for the snowboarding benefit, but I love watching the Tour de France. I live in Monaco. I find it [cycling] is a really good crossover because you have that consistent strength, power, and burn in the legs that I get in snowboarding. That really helps me once I get into the glaciers or at a high altitude.
MH: Obviously you’re able to manage your fears on the half-pipe, but do you have to rely on your instincts to guide you on whether to attempt something that might be overly risky on the day. Does something go off in your gut?
SJ: For sure. I would say it’s one of my strengths. I can always really tell when it’s right and when it’s wrong to do things and when to push it. And that comes down to energy, comes down to the environment you’re in, comes down to the variables that you’re dealing with – snow, wind, pipe, whatever else. And you’ve got to lean on your team sometimes to seek those answers to make the right decision. But on a perfect day and perfect pipe, perfect competition, I’m absolutely full steam ahead. I’m not really thinking about whether I should, or I shouldn’t do something. I’m all in. And you’ve got to be like that because that means you’re 110% present there.
MH: If you’re in a run and you don’t land quite as cleanly as you might’ve liked, but maybe no one else would know, how do you make sure that doesn’t affect your next trick or infect your mentality for the rest of that run?
SJ: It’s a good question. It depends if I land funny and I lose speed because you’ll obviously go lower in amplitude on the next hit and then with the tricks that we’re doing, you need all the amplitude you can find. So sometimes it can be a challenge to recover, but if you land a bit funny and you might’ve been a bit off with your body and you can correct very quickly and then set another line to continue, then I would continue to keep going for the tricks, even though you made a little mistake.
MH: I guess a run doesn’t have to be perfect to win.
SJ: Yeah, I really love that actually. We’ve been talking about that recently. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of great. Because if you strive for perfection, greatness is still great. And sometimes you get so obsessed with the details of perfection, perfection, perfection, that you actually forget how great things are. And this year in learning new tricks, you can be so critical about what they look like or how it felt and then you get to the bottom and everyone’s cheering and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, that was amazing’. Then you’ve let perfect be the enemy of great. And I think you’ve got to emphasise that point and we are emphasising that now.
