Time Predicted It and Chloe Kim Delivered: KA Snowboarder Wins Gold Medal #2 in Beijing
When Chloe Kim appeared on the cover of Time magazine on January 31, 2022, she had a tremendous amount of pressure on her going into the Beijing Olympics as the defending champion of the Snowboard Halfpipe competition. But she prevailed once again and defended her title of the Queen of the halfpipe, winning gold for Team USA. Her first run was nearly flawless and she scored 94 which was the highest score of the day.
Her first run was composed of a Straight Method Air, Frontside 1080 Tailgrap, Cab 900 Melon, Switch Backside 542, and ending the run with Cab 1080 Stalefish. No other competitor could land more than one 1080 in a single run and she landed two perfect 1080s. She mentioned right after her first run that she had the worst practice of her life on the day but what a perfect first run she performed.
At the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic, she was only 17 years old and became the youngest woman to win a gold medal in Halfpipe. At 21, she once again made history becoming the first woman to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in Halfpipe.
Watch Chloe Kim’s three runs on NBC Sports:
Fun Facts about Chloe Kim
- She started competiting at age 6.
- She qualified for the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games at age 13 but she was too young to compete.
- She competed on the singing competition show The Masked Singer as a Jellyfish and made it to the semi-finals in 2020.
- She won her first Winter X Games medal when she was 13 years old.
- She is the first athlete to hold snowboarding titles from four major events: Olympics, World Championships, X Games, Youth Olympics. She is also the only athlete in X Games history to win three gold medals before the age of 16.
- She is fluent in Korean and French.
- She is a student at Princeton University and plans to become a veterinarian after hanging up her snowboard.
