United States' Chloe Kim reacts during the women's halfpipe finals at the Winter Olympics on Feb. 10, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China.Lee Jin-man/The Associated Press
Chloe Kim did it again, soaring to another Olympic gold medal in the halfpipe.
She arrived at the 2018 Olympics into the embrace of a warm South Korean crowd, a loving family and instant stardom. It all seemed so easy.
The 2022 Olympic halfpipe final promised none of that – few fans, closer competition and the unrelenting pressure to repeat. Yet Kim did it again, soaring to another gold medal at Genting Snow Park.
Her winning score, a 94, left her well above Queralt Castellet of Spain, who earned the silver medal, and Sena Tomita of Japan, who won bronze.
On the first of her three runs, going last among 12 competitors under a blue sky, Kim landed a score that no one could beat, just as she did on her first run four years ago.
She knew it, too. When she got to the bottom, she put her hands to her head, fell on her knees in joy, and laughed, as if she had shocked even herself.
Rick Bower, Kim’s coach, said she was “uncharacteristically” nervous, and the emotion she displayed after landing her first run was as much relief as joy. The competition was over shortly after it began. “She has a bag of tricks that not anyone else does,” Bower said. “And she showcased that.”
She fell on her second run, upping the degree of difficulty, but it would not matter. She spotted her friend Eileen Gu, the freeskier from California who has already won one gold medal competing for China, and the two embraced before Kim headed back to the top for her final attempt.
Gu then headed to the slopestyle course for practice. She won gold in big air and will compete in slopestyle and halfpipe.
Even though Kim fell again, her final run was a suspense-free victory lap, a ride back into the stardom that she had tried to slide away from. This victory felt less like a coronation for Kim, now 21, but a personal comeback of sorts.
Kim did not have good practice sessions leading into the competition, U.S. coach Mike Jankowski said. But she nailed her final rehearsal run, boosting her confidence.
“All the pressure, the expectations are some of the most difficult types of pressures to deal with,” he said. “Today wasn’t as easy as she made it look, that’s for sure.”
The attention from her previous Olympic victory, and some of the nastiness, even within snowboarding circles, nearly chased her from the sport. She didn’t strap on a snowboard for 22 months, went to college at Princeton and bought a house. She grew up into someone more complicated than America’s snowboarding sweetheart.
She tossed herself back into the Olympic cycle a bit reluctantly. She was still the best in the world, with little dispute. Kim had not competed much since returning to the circuit a year ago, which might have given her competition some hope that she was rusty, but she had won everything she entered.
In the end, none of them could come close to Kim. She knew it on her first run, when she sandwiched a pair of 1080s around two other leading tricks, just as she knew it at the last Olympics.
Kim has grown up since competing in South Korea at 17 – a bit more guarded, a bit more independent, a bit more leery of the stardom that comes with every smile and near-perfect run. But on a snowboard, she still dares anyone to try to come close.