“I just need to finish off my collection in the pool room now because I’ve got my bronze and got the silver,” he said. “Four years from now we’ll do our best to finish it off.”

The man standing in his way of completing the collection is Ayumu Hirano of Japan. The 23-year-old beat James to gold by pulling off a trick no one else could. A triple cork - three revolutions under the sun at an angle so great that it carries the very real risk of ending with a head smashing into the ice or a board cracking on the edge of the lip.

“You just have to be so precise,” said James’ Australian teammate Valentino Guseli, the 16-year-old from Canberra who finished sixth. “The room for error is so little because you’re spinning so much. You’re definitely dizzy when you come out of that trick.”

The battle between Hirano and James came down to their final runs. James had landed a 92.5 in his second ride down the pipe, putting him in the lead, but chose not to attempt the triple cork - a trick he has done before but never at an Olympics as he went for his third and final run.

“I think really with the triple cork, it’s kind of the pinnacle, unless we build a bigger pipe it’s hard to really push much more than a triple cork because you can’t go high enough,” James said.

Speed, height and what James calls “bite out of the wall” are all factors in the decision to abandon or attempt the most technical trick in the sport. A decision that could end in gold, failure or injury for those who try it.

“In layman’s terms, when you take off you feel your board rip up to come up to your chest and today it was struggling,” he said.

“I went over to my coach who obviously I trust with my life and asked him, ‘what do you want me to do?’ I was ready to do whatever I needed to do but he kind of felt the same way. A lot of people were crashing in that spot and it’s not really something you want to mess around with.”

The decision may have cost James gold. Hirano - who qualified first and therefore the last run of the competition - had the final say. With less than a point separating the pair as the Japanese rider flew into the pipe for a final time, he pulled out a run which on any reasonable judgement had to win gold. Two triple corks, executed to perfection, as he soared above the valley to the gasps of the Japanese and Australian teams below.

Loading

“Oh, it was beautiful. It was flawless,” Guseli said. “I think it’s gonna be very hard to beat him for a very long time because he is just insane.”

James, now a three-time world champion and an Olympic silver and bronze medallist, finished his time in Beijing at the bottom of the slope with the man who made him want to become an Olympian: Shaun White.

The US snowboarder is to winter sports what Tony Hawk is to skateboarding. On Friday, the three-time Olympic champion called it quits at 35 after two decades of redefining the sport. White came fourth behind Hirano, James and Swiss bronze medallist Jan Scherrer.

“I looked up to him so much when I was younger,” James said. “But I almost had to get rid of that respect because we are competitors.”

A teary White said James had come so far since they first met in 2008. “I’m super proud of you man,” he said. “Keep going, bud”.

James will keep going. But first he has a wedding to plan with his fiancee Chloe.

“She said to me the other day, ‘can you just hurry up with this thing? Because we need to talk about some wedding dates’,” said James.

“I’ve spent my life in the snow. So we’ll have a nice summer wedding. We love Italy, so we are thinking about doing it there. It’s also a good omen, obviously - the next Games are there.”

That’s four years, a wedding and a pool room to finish off.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.