![\"Scotty](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/b0789dbb1ca3a23abb8f0259c5f84f69081636d9.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nLivigno: As Scotty James soared for one final shot at an Olympic gold medal, an overhead cable from the broadcast camera that was tracking him snapped above the mixed zone at the end of the halfpipe and came crashing down.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Scotty James in the men\u2019s halfpipe final.Credit: AP<\/p>\n
Those underneath it thought something had gone horribly wrong – so wrong, potentially, that the result might have been in question had it come into his peripheral vision.<\/p>\n
Fellow Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli thought someone from above was trying to send Scotty a sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what was crazy? Did you see the wire that broke? I thought that that was some kind of omen from the shred gods,\u201d Guseli said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was riding that pipe, he was tearing it apart – like, that was from the shred gods saying, \u2018We\u2019re with you Scotty\u2019 while he was in the pipe. It was the craziest thing that\u2019s ever happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did James notice the cable? And if he did notice the cable, would that have been grounds for a protest?<\/p>\n
Guseli reckoned so.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he noticed it, that would be enough to mess you up if you\u2019re in a trick,\u201d Guseli said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in that trick, he probably didn\u2019t notice it – but if he did, you\u2019d want a re-run, kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turned out, James only found out about it when it was raised with him afterwards by media.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s talking about the cable,\u201d he said. \u201cI should blame it on the cable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fundamentally, the result was a case of someone being better than him on the night, and James was not hiding from that.<\/p>\n
As Guseli put it: \u201cI guess they [the shred gods] weren\u2019t with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Valentino](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/743766cdf39b5a916455ce099ae37c5f80270b0e.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Valentino Guseli in the men\u2019s halfpipe final. Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Nor were they with him. Guseli, 20, pulled off a score of 88.00 in his third and final run to finish in fifth – his best effort at this level, continuing his progression, but not yet enough to get on on the dais.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the first two runs I sucked, but I landed my last one, and I got one place better than I did at the last Olympics – so we\u2019re going up, which is cool,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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The pressure of the occasion and the quality of the field made it tricky for him to compete, and to bring out his best self.<\/p>\n
If he had more time between the Olympics and the ACL injury he sustained in December 2024, could he have rivalled James and the Japanese for a medal?<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, but that wasn\u2019t the reality, and I did what I could with my reality,\u201d Guseli said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if I rode better today I would be in a better place – and I definitely think I could have ridden better, but dealing with the pressure of the Olympics, and especially finals, it\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, I watched the girls and was surprised with how many crashes there were \u2013 stuff that I\u2019ve seen these girls do really consistently and then on that night they couldn\u2019t really get it. And then, today, I understood why.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of finals pressure in the Olympics is massive, and I think everyone felt it a little bit. I think Yuto managed to feel it the least and put down the best run, which is great for him, and unfortunately for Scotty, didn\u2019t get the W [win] that everyone was expecting and hoping for. But it might keep him in the sport a bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guseli couldn\u2019t say if the nerves he felt in Livigno were different to the nerves he felt as a 16-year-old at Beijing in 2022. What he did know was that jagging a medal was within his current capabilities had he executed. And he didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that today, I definitely was going for gold a lot more than four years ago. I didn\u2019t have much experience back then … going into it I believed that if I did my best snowboarding, that I could have won,\u201d Guseli said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe if I did my best snowboarding, I could have won. But I just didn\u2019t. That\u2019s the nature of the game. Sucks to suck, I guess. But it doesn\u2019t really – that\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Livigno: As Scotty James soared for one final shot at an Olympic gold medal, an overhead cable from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-478499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}