Scotty James dreams of Sochi gold despite not winning a World Cup event

FOUR years ago, Aussie teen Scotty James was the youngest winter Olympian in 50 years. Now he's 23 cm taller and out to grab gold in Sochi.

SOMETIMES in sport, you end up on top without winning.

Tennis, the sport we're all focused on this week, has had world No. 1s who never won a major. And now snowboarding has a World Cup winner who claimed his crown without winning a single event.

Meet Scotty James. You might remember him as the skinny 15-year-old prodigy from the Vancouver Olympics. He was the youngest male winter Olympian from any country in 50 years.

Little Scotty James is a different person these days in all sorts of ways. For one thing, he's big Scotty James.

The Colorado-based Melburnian is 23cm taller than four years ago. That makes him a 188cm giant of his sport. But he didn't reach that height without all sorts of growing pains.

As James sprung upwards over the last four years, his airtime in the half-pipe started getting bigger and bigger. That made landing his tricks really difficult.

A new American coach, Abe Teter, took him in and helped with his "air awareness". He's now doing some of the biggest tricks in the world.

He also got a much bigger snowboard.

James has been upgrading his snowboard on a regular basis since the age of three. He learned to ski aged just one, then one day, his dad saw a 80cm display board about the size of a large skateboard in a ski shop in Canada.

His dad bought it for $10.

That $10 investment could turn to gold in two weeks time when James takes on the likes of Aussie world champion Nate Johnstone and America's legendary Shaun White, aka "The Flying Tomato", who set up a secret half-pipe last October in the NSW ski resort of Perisher.

Gold or not, James already has a crystal globe on his shelf. That's the prize awarded to the overall World Cup champion - the title James secured last week.

As mentioned, he won that with cumulative results that included no wins. Indeed, his best result was a third in an event in Canada.

Wins or no wins, there's no doubt the title of World Cup champ will help his swagger in Sochi. And half-pipe is an event for confident men. Like a heavyweight boxing bout, ego is all part of the game.

James will also contest the new Olympic event of slopestyle, which consists of a range of huge jumps, rails, boxes and other features commonly seen in ski resort "terrain parks".

James is a bit of a Justin Bieber lookalike but, unlike the alleged Canadian singer, the snowboarder's career trajectory is very much on the up. Australia's head snowboard coach in Sochi, Ben Wordsworth was upbeat about James' chances.

"He's a very talented snowboarder," Wordsworth said. "I think he's an equally good chance in both events."