When James Woods told his parents he wanted to leave Sheffield to ski and study in Austria aged 15, they feared he was running off to the mountains to do drugs. Ten years on he is at the forefront of Team GB’s big-tricks department – and with a major chance of winning Britain’s first ski medal at an Olympics.
That is pretty much the only thing missing from his trophy cabinet. He is only 25 but Woods – or Woodsy as he has always been called – already has a staggering 17 medals in major freestyle skiing competitions. Not that he is counting. Instead he regards them as a happy byproduct of seeking thrills and having fun.
“It’s really interesting coming into an Olympics because it’s not the world that we come from,” he says. “It is very different. For me it’s the counter-culture, renegade lifestyle that is appealing. That’s why I got into freestyle skiing.”
Yet he knows he has unfinished business at the Games, given he was a favourite for ski slopestyle gold at Sochi four years ago – only to injure himself in practice when a gust of wind threw him a long way past the landing zone, damaging a hip.
“I had aspirations of the performance I wanted to give but I got hurt,” he says. “So I couldn’t do that. Instead I did a baseline run and got myself the hell out of there to the doctor. I came fifth, which is a fantastic result. I’m very proud of myself, looking back.
“And all being well I’m going to put down the run of my life here and it will be wonderful,” he adds. “Winning feels great, everyone knows that. It’s part of human nature. But the professional and the mature approach to all this is really just to put in your best performance.”
His friends back home in Sheffield are all planning to get up in the early hours of Sunday to watch. “They’re just amazing,” he says. “They’ve supported me through some difficult decisions at school. I was 13, 14, 15 years old when I was making these calls that could’ve really screwed me up. This group of guys were always there for me. Every time we go back we still go to the same pub, the Notty House. One of the lads works at Aldi. He had to put up my posters the other day. That was funny.”
Woods started skiing aged 10 at Sheffield’s dry slope after seeing an advert in the local paper. None of his friends or family skied but he was soon spending as much time as possible on the halfpipe, two kickers, a moguls run and even a big air ramp with a landing into water.
“I was not a fan of the norm,” he admits. “All I wanted to do was get away from everybody and do my own thing. I skateboarded for years, surfing, skydiving, skiing. I’m not one for exactly holding back.”
That alternative approach meant studying for his GCSEs in Mayrhofen, Austria, and his A-levels via email while he trained in Colorado. Yet while he was a teenager it was obvious he had a rare talent for throwing himself off huge ramps and doing tricks to make people’s jaws come crashing to earth. He was a teenager when he won slopestyle bronze at the 2011 European X Games in Tignes, France which proved an omen of things to come.
And that relationship with his parents? Well, it has “evolved”. “Mostly they’re quite proud of what I do,” says the man who simultaneously manages to be one of the most laid-back athletes in Team GB and one of the most successful. “I tell them it’s all calculated risk. It may seem daredevilish and extreme, but I’m very much more calculated than my mum gives me credit for.”
