Winter Olympics 2026: Yuto Totsuka soars to gold as men’s halfpipe hits absurd stratosphere

LIVIGNO, Italy — There were two things everybody agreed on after the men’s snowboard halfpipe final Friday night.

First, what the 12 finalists just participated in was the heaviest, most exciting, most daring halfpipe competition ever held anywhere.

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Second, whatever Japan’s doing to dominate this event, the United States and other countries need to figure it out before the next Winter Olympics in 2030.

After all the corks, switches and grabs that dazzled the crowds stacked up along the halfpipe at Livigno Snow Park, it was Yuto Totsuka sobbing atop the podium with a gold medal hanging around his neck as the Japanese national anthem played. Next to him was another Japanese rider, Ryusei Yamada, who won bronze. And clapping for both of them were Ruka Hirano in fourth and Ayumu Hirano, who finished seventh and wasn’t that far off from the performance that won him the gold medal in 2022.

“Everyone was going massive,” New Zealand’s Campbell Melville Ives said. “It’s not often that so many people land such crazy runs.”

The craziest was the one Totsuka put down about half an hour earlier: A monster with two triple-cork 1440s, a switch backside-double 1080 and a backside-double 1260, good enough for the judges to award a 95.00. And he deserved every bit of it.

Scotty James, the Australian legend who won bronze in 2018 and silver four years ago, has won everything but a gold medal. Starting the final run just 1.5 points behind Tatsuka and the silver in his pocket, the opportunity was right there on the last run to do something historic. It just wasn’t meant to be: James’ final trick, the one he needed to one-up Totsuka, didn’t quite land.

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“I went for a back 1620 on the last hit, and that would have been the run, I think, to do it,” James said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t make it.”

In many ways, though, who hit the podium was secondary to the show everybody put on and the evolving story of the sport itself.

Every four years, halfpipe riders showcase tricks with more amplitude, more flips, more spins, more flair, more fearlessness. Go back and watch Shaun White’s run from 20 years ago in Turin when he won his first of three gold medals. For its time, it was impressive — the best in the world. But by today’s standards? Rudimentary.

When he repeated in 2010, White’s 1260 Double McTwist trick was a ground-breaker. Nobody else could do it. Friday night, if that was your best trick, it would have made you a spectator.

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Or how about this for context: Veteran American rider Chase Josey said every run that landed Friday night could have won a gold medal at some previous point in history.

“That’s just a fact,” he said. “Four years ago, probably the top-five runs [Friday] would have won it. It just goes to show that four years of progression really goes fast.”

It leaves us with a question: Where does it end? How big can these tricks get? And, from an American point of view, can our snowboarders keep up?

Yes, there’s a lot of promise around 17-year-old Alessandro Barbieri, who landed a basic run on his first attempt to score 75.00 points but couldn’t put one down when it was time to go bigger and finished 10th.

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But when you ask these riders what the difference is between the Americans and a Japanese system that has claimed six of the last 12 Olympic halfpipe medals with a deep bench of talent — at times Friday, it seemed like Japan was having its own competition within the Olympic final — there is an answer.

The Japanese have built an airbag training facility that Josey described as “next level” because it allows riders to mimic a takeoff and landing as they would on a real halfpipe.

“That’s something the U.S. doesn’t have right now,” he said. “We’ve made the trip over to that facility and trained it, and you can see the difference it makes for younger riders and high-caliber riders as well.”

And for American riders to access it requires spending their own money to go train in Japan, which is both costly and not particularly practical for most of them when they’re based in the U.S.

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In essence, the Japanese — backed by a lot of technology and funding — are beating Americans at the sport they invented back in Lake Tahoe 45 years ago.

“To be honest with you, there is a huge variable with the funding,” said Jake Pates, who finished eighth after coming back from a four-year hiatus from the sport. “It puts it on the rider to fly to Japan, spend months and months training like they’re doing. I did it last summer, and that’s the only way I’ve been able to come back and do this at all.”

But how realistic is that? It takes resources and sponsors, which Pates hopes he’ll get as a result of performing on the Olympic stage to help him push forward toward 2030.

“U.S. riders are going to have to put up a little bit of money on their end if they want to make it happen,” he said.

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And as we saw Friday, this sport moves on whether or not America comes along for the ride. White carried the banner to three gold medals, but his departure did not slow down the progression of the generations he inspired. Halfpipe specialists are better than ever.

“Everyone is riding to an unprecedented level,” Josey said. “[The Japanese riders] are just hungry, and they know they have to ride hard to get the respect that they want. They’re fiery, they’re strong and they’re ready to push the limits beyond what’s been seen.”