Aussie snowboarder Scotty James reveals the price he paid and what's still missing in documentary

Scotty James met his billionaire-heiress wife shortly after a chance encounter with her brother in a bathroom. He lives in Monaco and has spent his life jet-setting across the world piling up fame and fortune.

Yet any inkling that everything Australia’s best snowboarder touches turns to gold is dismissed mere seconds into his new autobiographical documentary “Scotty James: Pipe Dream.”

There’s “an elephant in the room,” James says – a still-missing Olympic gold medal – and if he doesn’t get it this winter at the games in Italy, well, life will still be fine but “is it ever going to happen? And I feel that pressure every day.”

“Pipe Dream,” which comes out Dec. 19 on Netflix, uses decades’ worth of home and handheld footage to take us on the heartfelt road James traveled to become one of the best in his sport.

It’s also a fitting preview for the upcoming Olympics, bringing the once-every-four-years fans up to date with where this sport has been, where it’s going and where, exactly, the 31-year-old James — a seven-time Winter X Games champ who has Olympic silver and bronze — fits into all that.

This documentary weaves two tales. The first is about James – his life and his career. The tears he sheds while recounting the heart-wrenching decision to leave Australia at age 12 to go bigger in America are real, James said in an Associated Press interview, because not until making this movie did he fully understand what a gut punch that was to his family, too.

“I felt like when I got on the plane, I was the only one that was really upset and crying,” James said. “When I now hear the story from my family’s side, it was really eye-opening and emotional for me because it was the first time I really heard how they felt about it.”

Taken under wing by Australia’s first great snowboarder, Olympic gold medalist Torah Bright and her brother, Ben, Scotty’s career turned out fine, as we all know now.

The twists and turns and inside looks at what happened between ages 12 and 31 are what form the sports part of this story – namely, how the sacrifices James has made over the years have set him up for his upcoming challenge.

Whether he wins gold or not next year in Italy, James will leave a complex legacy in snowboarding.

While three-time Olympic champion Shaun White gets most of the credit for teaching all the shredder dudes that it was OK to go out and try to make a living doing this instead of just kickin’ back and having fun, James embraced that attitude, too.

And while the reigning Olympic champion, Ayumu Hirano of Japan, is largely seen as the next phase of what White started, people paying close attention to this sport cannot ignore our protagonist, who grew up outside of Melbourne riding dirt bikes.

In current-day men’s halfpipe riding, a trick called the triple cork – three head-over-heels flips above the halfpipe that is the most dangerous in a sport filled with life-and-death decisions at every turn -- defines the contours of the debate.

White, Hirano and a stable of Japanese riders practiced it for years, with Hirano finally using it in China in 2022 to edge out James for the gold.

James didn’t ignore it, but then again, he never set out to be the sport’s highest flier.

He does tricks going backward and forward, while twisting clockwise and counterclockwise. They don’t send him as high as some riders but some of them are, by most accounts, are even more impossible than the triple cork. It’s a skill set two-time Olympic champion Chloe Kim sums up nicely in the doc.

In other words, James is a technical master and appreciated by insiders in a game that – fortunately or not, depending on your view – is usually won by those who power their way to the biggest jumps.

By the end of the movie, he realizes that, too.

His willingness to capture the perspectives of White and Hirano – his biggest rivals and, some might say, tormentors – is a window into what makes this documentary something better than just a treacly highlight reel of James’ career.

“I think it’s really important to hear my side of the story because, yes, it’s about me, but it’s not just about me,” James said. “It’s about everyone that’s been part of that competitive journey.”

The next and maybe most-important chapter of this drama will be played out in the Italian Alps in February. Who snowboard fans root for at the upcoming Olympics could hinge on what they think about “Pipe Dream.”