LIVIGNO, Italy — At the top of the halfpipe, seconds away from destiny or disappointment, Chloe Kim took a long pause and a deep breath.
For an hour, it seemed like Kim was cruising toward a third straight gold medal and Olympic history for any snowboarder, man or woman. And then, out of nowhere, a metaphorical thunderbolt pierced through the snowy night sky.
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It was 17-year-old Gaon Choi, whose body had been twisted and bruised by two gnarly falls, standing up and stomping a run that had taken the lead and put Kim in a position she hadn’t experienced very often in her forever career.
This time, the coronation was off. The pressure was on.
Kim couldn’t help but think about the symmetry of her first Olympics eight years ago, a 17-year-old about to introduce herself to the world.
“I was in very similar shoes once upon a time,” she said. “It’s such a full circle moment.”
Not that Kim expected or wanted to lose. But she’s 25 now; a grown woman who’s seen and been through a lot. One of Team USA’s greatest Winter Olympians. A marketing machine who can spend the rest of her life doing whatever she wants.
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In other words, as she stared down the barrel, she was free to make a choice: She could try to add some juice to the run that initially gave her the lead or she could try to win the gold medal by bashing down the door.
“I wanted to make history, and in that way,” Kim said. “I wanted to go for it because that’s what I do.”
At the bottom of the hill, the crescendo of expectation started to build. Some fans started chanting, “USA! USA!” but not many others joined in. The moment felt heavy, almost surreal.
Choi, despite a pedigree that included an X Games gold medal as a 14-year old, had on this night come out of nowhere. Her first two runs had looked so scary, so painful, nobody would have blamed her for packing up and heading home.
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Just a few moments earlier, as a bevy of riders slid and crashed into a halfpipe that had been rendered sticky by the steady snowfall, it seemed there was little chance of anyone putting down a run that would threaten Kim’s crown.
It was not immediately obvious, as Choi crossed the flat bottom, that she had taken the lead. It was a good run, to be sure. But a winning one? After a quiet minute, the score flashed on the scoreboard: 90.25, bettering Kim’s 88.00 that had held up for 18 straight runs.
“I was a bit shocked then,” Choi said. “And my knees hurt so badly I was kind of out of it.”
The crowd was equally shocked: A gasp, then a pall. The party would have to wait.
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And then, it never came.
Kim committed to go for it, but we never saw what might have been. Her second hit turned out to be her last. Kim’s cab double cork 1080 — a standard trick — never landed. In the blink of an eye, a grab for gold turned into a skid for silver.
In that moment, Kim’s mind turned to history. She has become an icon like the riders who inspired her greatness, and in a way, it was only right that another mega-talent who once idolized her grabbed the baton.
Kim knew that’s the outcome Choi’s run deserved.
“She took a heavy slam, got back up and won the damn thing,” Kim said. “That’s badass.”
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Only in the aftermath of it all, as Kim beamed on the podium with her silver medal, did it sink in that she was merely the co-protagonist of the story Thursday. The toughness of Choi to come back from those falls, those bruises, and find power in legs that could barely stand, had proven worthy of standing not just beside Kim but one step above her.
That’s the way it should be, from one all-time great to the next.
“Chloe said she’s retiring now and seemed really happy about it,” Choi said.
If that’s true, it’s no surprise. Kim had been drifting away from the sport since 2022. This always felt like a last hurrah.
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In a career like hers, there aren’t many what-ifs. But perhaps one will be what might have happened if she had been fully prepared for this event, if she hadn’t banged her shoulder last month in Switzerland. Kim and her team managed it as best they could, but she revealed it’s going to require surgery.
Maybe as much as the gold medal, Kim wanted to land a 1440 — a four-rotation trick she had pulled off in practice but never in competition. She had planned to try it on the second run Thursday, but never made it that far.
“There was a lot of conversation happening about the three-peat and whatnot,” Kim said. “And I think I was thinking about it, for sure. But the minute I injured myself, I was like, ‘That doesn’t matter anymore.’ Let’s just get there and see how far we can go. So this feels like a win for me because a month ago, it didn’t seem too possible.”
Still, she was agonizingly close to something special, something only Shaun White had done winning the halfpipe in 2006, 2010 and 2018. Her family, including her NFL star boyfriend Myles Garrett and her father Jong Jin Kim, who sacrificed so much to launch her into this career, were there at the bottom waiting to celebrate.
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And in the end, they did. But they didn’t celebrate the color of the medal. They celebrated her — an end to 12 years of snowboarding greatness and a beginning of whatever’s next. Just as it should be.
“I’m here walking away with my third medal!” she said, her voice rising with pride. “What the hell? This is so sick!”
