Scotty James was just three years old when he fell in love with snowboarding after his dad bought him a small $10 display board in Canada.

Now, nearly three decades later, the 31-year-old’s passion and persistence have taken him to the pinnacle of his sporting career as he prepares to compete for gold in the men’s halfpipe at his fifth Olympics early on Saturday morning (AEDT) ­– an achievement that would make him Australia’s most decorated Winter Olympian.

With an Olympic silver and bronze already in his back pocket, along with a swag of X-Games and World Championship medals, James has admitted he thinks a lot about nabbing that elusive gold, but “in a healthy way”.

“Like, I don’t act in desperation, or I’m not hugely emotional about it,” he recently told Wide World of Sports.

“I think where I can get emotional is when you probably overload my plate or try and do too many things at once instead of focusing on the goal, which is to do very well at the Olympics.”

The likeable young sports star ­– whose greatest cheerleaders are wife Chloe (a singer-songwriter and daughter of billionaire formula one team owner Lawrence Stroll) and toddler son Leo – has a legion of fans around the world. But he’s perhaps less well-known in his home country after spending much of his life living, training and competing overseas.

James grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Warrandyte and was only 10 when he started specialising in halfpipe snowboarding. He began competing professionally at 14 and first made his mark on the international stage at 15 in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

But in the Netflix documentary Pipe Dream, he revealed that things didn’t come easily in those early years, especially when he had to be away from his family while chasing the snow.

“A kid from Australia who’s wound up being a professional snowboarder – the odds have been against me my whole life,” he said in the film.

“Warrandyte is not a hotbed for winter sport at all.”

His talent and sacrifices took James to his first World Halfpipe Championship title in 2017. A year later he won bronze at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics – where he was also the Australian flag bearer ­– followed by a silver at the Beijing Games in 2022.

He admitted in Pipe Dream that he was struggling with a career low point at the start of 2017, which is when he came across a pair of red Everlast boxing gloves in his wardrobe. They would become the inspiration for the signature gloves he now wears on the slopes.

“I’m going to wear these this week and be like, ‘I’m coming out to fight’,” James said of his thinking at the time.

The red gloves, described as a nod to Australia’s Olympic sporting icon the boxing kangaroo, helped fire him up. Today visitors to the athlete’s website can buy similar gloves made by his own brand and dubbed “Fight Night”.

 

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In more recent years, James has had his Canadian wife Chloe by his side supporting his snowboarding dreams.

The couple met in 2019 after being introduced through her younger brother, F1 driver Lance Stroll.

“Lance actually called me and said, ‘I think I just found the guy you’re going to marry’,’’ Stroll told News Ltd in 2020, adding that their first encounter was in Utah, where James had a competition and she was attending a conference.

“Scotty was very cute. We dated for about four months, or as he likes to say, we got to know each other, before he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. The next morning he said, ‘Now that you’re my girlfriend, can I leave my snowboard here?’.”

Although the couple are said to largely keep their private life private, their first public event together was New York’s glamorous Met Gala.

James and Stroll became engaged in 2021. They tied the knot two years later in a star-studded ceremony in Italy, where guests included actor Michael Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones.

With almost 600,000 followers on Instagram, James is known for his engaging and often witty posts – one of the most recent of which featured him dressed in the green and gold, doing an impressive re-creation of Hugh Grant’s dance to the Pointer Sisters’ Jump from classic Christmas rom-com Love, Actually.

“Love, actually, is the green and gold,” he wrote in the caption.

Instagram is also where he and Stroll announced in 2024 that they were expecting, with baby Leo Harry James arriving later the same year. James recently posted a video of toddler Leo wearing a helmet and strapped into a baby backpack on their “first day on the mountain together”.

“Leo’s going snowboarding with dad,” he said in the clip, which shows Stroll on skis in front of the pair as they ride down a mountain and Leo makes “brrrm brrrm” noises.

James jokes: “He’s really talking some smack to me back there, actually – it’s really hurting my self-esteem. Says I need to get lower, need to turn a little better, be a bit more aggressive.”

As well as his achievements on the slopes, James has also made a successful foray into the publishing world with his children’s adventure book series MOOKi, inspired by his childhood nickname.

The snowboarder’s publisher, Penguin, said he was encouraged to tap into his creative side from a young age and often doodled cartoons and animations. In MOOKi, he brought to life his alter-ego, complete with an astronaut suit and James’ signature red gloves. The character was created as “a symbol to always shoot for the moon and dream big”.

“MOOKi accepts failure and embraces his friends, Cindy and Ralph, to help pick him back up and get on his feet,” James said in a Penguin Q&A in 2024.

“He takes on the challenges and, most importantly, does it all with a smile on his face. I think that’s really important and something that I do every day.

“So my advice is to enjoy yourself, have fun and be along for the ride. It’s a fun ride.”

When James lines up alongside fellow Australian teammate Valentino Guseli for the epic halfpipe final at the Winter Olympics on Friday (5.30am Saturday AEDT), he will be shooting for the moon and hoping to make his own dream come true.

After winning the World Cup halfpipe in Switzerland last month and then smashing the qualification round this week at the Milan-Cortina Games, he is considered the favourite, but acknowledges that nothing is assured.

“I think from a competitive standpoint, halfpipe riding probably in the Olympics is the most competitive it’s ever been,” James said on Thursday.

“I think the top six … can win, so I don’t think that’s been the case before.

“It’s going to be an amazing battle and a really good showing for halfpipe riding for the men, and that’s why you’ve got to bring your best on Friday, and I look forward to being a part of it.”

–with AAP