SNOWBOARD: For any athlete, the four years between Olympic Games can be a rollercoaster journey of training and competition, highs and lows. Since the 2010 Vancouver Games, snowboarder Scotty James has had all this in addition to finishing high school, growing 15 centimetres and putting on 25 kilograms.

A last minute addition to the 2010 Team, James made history in Vancouver. At just 15 years of age, he was the youngest male competitor at the whole Games, and Australia’s youngest male Olympian in 50 years.

Despite crashing in his first halfpipe run, James landed an impressive string of double and triple spins in his second qualification, placing him 21^st overall.

Now 19, James is hardly recognisable as the baby-faced teenager he was in Vancouver but with the next Olympics fast approaching, one thing remains the same - he is still out to make history.

Like his former training partner Torah Bright, James is attempting to make history by competing in more than one event in Sochi. With slopestyle added to the 2014 Olympic program he has been training for it in addition to the pipe.

“I’ve always done slopestyle competition, but over the years, halfpipe has probably been my stronger side,” James said.

The young Melbourne rider has enjoyed a steady rise in both disciplines with a string of top-ten finishes over the last two seasons. At the recent World Championships in Stoneham, Canada, he notched a career best performance of sixth in the halfpipe - also placing 16th in slopestyle.

Although training for two Olympic events may seem like a big workload, James is taking it in his stride

“It’s been a little bit more busy this time around but I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I’ve just been really enjoying my time on the snow so I’m not bothered to be on the snow more than if I was just doing halfpipe.”

In his trademark laid-back way, he’s not giving too much away but appears quietly confident that he is doing everything he can to get the best results from his second Olympic Games campaign. Key to this has been learning the triple cork for his slopestyle - a difficult trick that requires the boarder to flip three times on three different axes.

“The big thing is triple corks – everyone is doing triple corks,” he said. “At the Olympics, if you’re going to do any good, you’ve got to do a triple cork.”

Earlier in the year, James took the opportunity of being in camp in Aspen, USA to dedicate himself to learning the new trick.

“I got it done,” he said with noticeable relief. “It was pretty scary but I made it happen – so I’m happy now. It should really make my Olympic qualification process a little easier, depending if I can put it in my runs or not.”

The next step in the qualification process gets underway in just a couple of weeks, with James heading to New Zealand for the halfpipe and slopestyle World Cups at the NZ Winter Games. The event is attracting some of the best riders in the world including two-time Olympic halfpipe champion Shaun White so it will be a great chance for James and his teammates to see how they are faring with the Sochi Games getting closer and closer.