No losers on a memorable Olympic halfpipe, but Scotty James gets silver behind Japan's Yuto Totsuka

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — The best snowboard contest in history came down to one trick. Half a spin, really.

Scotty James built up speed, launched himself above the coping of the halfpipe and took his Olympic hopes and dreams for a twirl through the clear, night sky Friday.

He was trying what snowboarders call an “NBD” — Never Been Done — because on this night, in this contest, that's what it would take for one of the greats in this sport to win the gold medal that barely eluded him at the past three Games.

He landed on his backside at the end of that fateful 1620-degree spin — a half a rotation more than he'd ever done before in a contest. It left him holding a second Olympic silver medal while Japan's Yuto Totsuka won the gold one that Australia's best snowboarder was dearly hoping for.

On a night that will be remembered for the history and art created on that 22-foot-high tunnel of concrete-like snow, it's only right to say there really were no losers.

But the site of James kneeling on the side of the halfpipe after the fall, his head buried in the red boxing gloves he uses as mittens, then him wiping his eyes as he stepped onto the second-place podium to accept his prize, were signs of how much this meant to him.

“To be honest,” James said, “I’m a bit numb.”

Totsuka has known that feeling, too.

The 24-year-old has spent years near the top of Japan's ever-growing halfpipe dynasty, winning X Games and Dew Tours and world championships and throwing huge tricks with the best of them.

But when the lights were the brightest, he wasn't near the top. Four years ago in China, when teammate Ayumu Hirano finally broke through and broke the stranglehold Shaun White held on this sport for more than a decade, Totsuka was an afterthought; he finished 10th. That was one spot better than his placement in 2018.

But the story that led to this gold medal began that year, around the time of the Pyeongchang Games. That's when, knowing where this sport was headed, Totsuka started working not just on landing a triple cork — three head over heels flips that Hirano used to win the gold medal in China — but on landing two of them, back-to-back.

It was that combination of tricks — a pair of 1440-degree triple corks, one riding backward, the other going forward — that put Totsuka at the top of the standings after his second run. It placed the pressure on James.

“There was a time when I was really thinking about giving up," Totsuka said. “To be able to do two triples is something I'm quite proud of.”

The two triples won the contest. A list of tricks that didn't might better explain where this 90 minutes of riding fits into snowboarding lore.

—Where four years ago, Hirano was the only rider to land a triple in his narrow win over James (White finished fourth), this time eight of the 12 riders did it.

—Where triple corks with 1620 degrees of spin, not 1440, have mostly been unheard of, Korea's Chaeun Lee, who became the first to land one in training about 16 months ago, tried it twice.

—Hirano, a favorite to repeat at Christmas, was a mere afterthought on this, the day before Valentine's Day, having severely injured himself in a contest last month. Still, he wouldn't have missed this.

“I'm still injured,” he said. “I couldn't do my best here. But I was happy to be here to represent Japan.”

—Hirano's Japanese teammate, Ruka Hirano (not related) and Cam Melville Ives, the 19-year-old from New Zealand, were the other two who landed not one, but two triple corks in their runs.

Ruka Hirano stood there with a look of shock when his score posted and it was one point less than another teammate of his, Ryusei Yamada, who won bronze without a triple, but was so spinny and precise, he was hard to deny.

“I think there were a lot of tricks that none of these athletes had ever landed in competition before,” said White, the three-time champion who was on hand and had picked Totsuka to win the night before. “It was a wild night. Overall, I'm so happy for Yuto. He definitely crushed it.”

Totsuka's triples left James with a choice before he dropped down for the 36th and final run of a three-run final involving 12 contestants.

He could try to redo his second run, the one that put him in second place, maybe due to just the slightest of speed checks after a triple cork at the top.

That run finished with a pair of backside 1440-degree spins, one going forward, the other going backward.

Less than three weeks ago, that was an “NBD” until James did it to win the X Games and give his sport a preview of what was to come.

But what he really wanted to do — and now, felt he needed to do — was pull that last spin around another half revolution.

“I wasn't necessarily thinking about making history," James said. “But that was the run I personally came here to do”

A cable cord suspended over the halfpipe snapped in the middle of James' decisive run, swinging down and hitting a child in the face. The kid said he was stunned but fine. James said he never saw it.

He was locked in on that final 180 degrees. His inability to put it down led to a pair of scenes across the snowpark that were 180-degree polar opposites.

In the stands, fans waving Japanese flags celebrated their medals, their past champion and their new one. They cheered for their four riders, all of whom landed in the top seven.

“Ayumu has been both a hero and a rival to me,” Totsuka said, in explaining the way Hirano's victory four years ago broke a glass ceiling in this sport and in his country. “Now he inspires me, and everyone else.”

Meanwhile, outside the blue fencing, as their son winded his way through dozens of interviews, Celia and Phil James waited with blank stares and a few tears. Scotty, now 31, moved to America when he was 12, trying to squeeze more out of the potential he knew was there.

He changed the game on the halfpipe, focusing on technical riding more than sky-high tricks. That 1620-degree difference-maker was the foremost example of that. It was a trick he'd landed dozens of times in pre-Olympics practice. Just not when it counted the most.

“All week long, he said he'd do his best," Celia said. “But, I think he wanted that gold. I think he doesn't think he did his best. That's the hard part. I feel devastated for him."

AP Sports Writer Joseph Wilson contributed to this report.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Australia's Scotty James reacts after falling on his last run to win the silver medal during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Japan's Yuto Totsuka competes during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Australia's Scotty James reacts during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Japan's Yuto Totsuka celebrates during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Gold medalist Japan's Yuto Totsuka reacts after winning the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Japan's Yuto Totsuka competes during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Japan's Yuto Totsuka celebrates winning the gold medal in the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Japan's Yuto Totsuka competes during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Australia's Scotty James reacts to his run during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Australia's Scotty James reacts during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Japan's Yuto Totsuka celebrates during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A judge sentenced an 18-year-old who acknowledged killing five people in a North Carolina mass shooting to life in prison without parole Friday, rejecting arguments that he deserved the chance for release decades from now.

Austin David Thompson was 15 during the Oct. 13, 2022, attack that began at his Raleigh home when he shot and repeatedly stabbed his 16-year-old brother, James.

Equipped with firearms and wearing camouflage, Thompson then fatally shot four others — including an off-duty city police officer — in his neighborhood and along a greenway. He was arrested in a shed after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

Thompson pleaded guilty last month to five counts of first-degree murder and five other counts less than two weeks before his scheduled trial.

Thompson, who did not speak publicly in court, was led away in handcuffs after the sentencing. Family members of the shooting victims cried as the sentence was handed down. Thompson’s attorneys announced plans to appeal the sentence.

Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway had the option to sentence him to life in prison with the chance for parole after at least 25 years, but Thompson did not face the death penalty given his age at the time of the crimes.

“It’s hard to conceive of a greater display of malice,” Ridgeway said after chronicling the events of that day, adding that Thompson's months of planning and fantasizing before the rampage confirmed he is the rare juvenile offender “whose crime reflects irreparable corruption” and thus required a life without parole sentence.

During the sentencing hearing that began last week, prosecutors revealed the previously confidential contents of a handwritten note with Thompson’s name and the shooting date found at his family's house in the Hedingham subdivision.

The note said the “reason I did this is because I hate humans they are destroying the planet/earth,” adding that he killed James Thompson ”because he would get in my way.”

Thompson “cannot tell you why he wrote that note the way that he did,” defense lawyer Deonte’ Thomas said, noting that he had no history of ecological-based anger. “And he cannot tell you why he ran down the streets of Hedingham terrorizing people that day.”

But “he is not unredeemable, he is not incorrigible,” Thomas added in asking Ridgeway to give him the opportunity one day to tell parole commissioners he could “still be a productive person in society.”

Thompson's attorneys argued that the rampage happened during a dissociative episode caused by medicine he regularly took for acne. A psychiatrist who interviewed Thompson and a geneticist testified to bolster the explanation, but Ridgeway rejected the theory Friday, saying the facts belied the argument.

The judge seemed to account strongly for the prosecution's evidence of Thompson’s internet search history leading up to the attack. They said it included school shootings and was related to guns, assaults and bomb-making materials, including details that Ridgeway said appeared to match his deadly actions.

Nicole Connors, 52; Raleigh police Officer Gabriel Torres, 29; Mary Marshall, 34; and Susan Karnatz, 49, also were killed in the rampage. Two other people were wounded, including another police officer involved in the search for Thompson.

“In the blink of an eye, everything changed for those people and for the people that they left behind,” Wake County assistant prosecutor Patrick Latour said Thursday while urging a sentence with no potential parole. “And the thing that made it change was not some acne medication. It was the defendant’s knowing, researched, well-thought-out, planned, decisive actions.”

Jasmin Torres, the widow of Gabriel Torres and the mother of their 5-year-old daughter, asked Ridgeway last week to sentence Thompson to life without parole, calling him a “monster.”

Rob Steele, Marshall's fiance at the time of her death, said after the hearing that while five consecutive sentences of life without parole were “what we were all hoping for,” Thompson still “ended five lives for reasons that I still don’t really understand in this case.”

Thompson’s parents testified they couldn’t explain why their son committed the violence, calling him a normal, happy kid who did well in school and showed no signs of destruction.

Thompson’s father pleaded guilty in 2024 to improperly storing his handgun that authorities said was found when his son was arrested. He received a suspended sentence and probation.

“We both lost our children, one at the hand of the other. We never saw this coming and still cannot make sense of it,” mother Elise Thompson said last week while telling the families of shooting victims she will “forever be sorry for the pain that this has caused you.”

Deputies lead a handcuffed Austin Thompson from the courtroom in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, after he was sentenced to five life sentences without the possibility of parole. (Scott Sharpe/The News & Observer via AP, Pool)

Elise Thompson wipes away tears in court in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, as Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul C. Ridgeway describes the actions of her son, Austin Thompson. (Scott Sharpe/The News & Observer via AP, Pool)

Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul C. Ridgeway addresses Austin Thompson in court in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (Scott Sharpe/The News & Observer via AP, Pool)

The parents of victim Mary Marshall wipe away tears in court in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, as Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul C. Ridgeway describes the victims of Austin Thompson before he was sentenced to life without parole. (Scott Sharpe/The News & Observer via AP, Pool)

Austin Thompson, center, listens in court in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, as Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul C. Ridgeway sentences him to five life sentences without the possibility of parole. (Scott Sharpe/The News & Observer via AP, Pool)

Rob Steele, center, the fiancé of 2022 mass shooting victim Mary Marshall, speaks to reporters at the Wake County Justice Center after a judge sentenced shooting defendant Austin Thompson to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Gary D. Robertson)