Website created by Richard Hildebrand © March 2016

Home Gallery Contact Us

James Machon (born 23 November 1990) is a freestyle skier who competes in the halfpipe, his first Olympics was the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

He was born in Sheffield and was initially schooled at Bamford Primary School and later went to Leeds Metropolitan University. He started skiing at the age of 6. Between the age of 6 and until he was 14, went on annual ski holidays with his family. He began practicing the freestyle skiing in the Sheffield freestyle skiing park, and began practicing that discipline when he was 15 years old.

Half-pipe skiing is snow ski on a half-pipe. The sport is considered to be dangerous compared to other sports, and helmets are required to be worn during competitions. Half-pipe skiing has been part of the Winter X Games since 2002, and has been approved to be an official sport at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

In 2006 he entered his first British Championships, and in the period from 2009 to 2013 (inclusive), won four consecutive British Halfpipe Championships.

At the start of the Olympic qualifying season he was ranked in the top 15 by the Association of Freeskiing Professionals, a position he feels is his "greatest sporting achievement so far".

Shortly before the selection for the 2014 Winter Olympics he was recovering from a severe knee injury, he had a tear in his anterior cruciate ligament, which kept his from competing for eight months.

He said that his competing after he tore his ligament was "looking virtually impossible", but he was happy he overcame the injury.

His Olympic debut was at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, which was also the first time snowboard halfpipe had been at an Olympics. He competed on 18 February 2014 in the halfpipe, an event in freestyle skiing. He finished 23rd.