Chloe Kim

Chloe Kim was born on 23 April 2000 in the Los Angeles area and started snowboarding at four at Mountain High. Her parents, Boran and Jong Jin Kim, had emigrated from Korea and built a life in Southern California; part of her childhood included training time in Switzerland before she settled into California’s Mammoth Mountain pathway. By her mid-teens she was already winning X Games hardware and too young for the age cut at Sochi 2014 — a rider waiting on the calendar more than on her tricks.

PyeongChang 2018 made her a global name overnight: Olympic halfpipe gold at 17, on Korean snow, with interviews in Korean that traveled on both sides of the Pacific. Beijing 2022 made her the first woman to defend the Olympic halfpipe title. Between those Games she collected X Games golds, a Youth Olympic title from Lillehammer, and World Championship golds in 2019, 2021, and 2025 — the rare rider with every major crown on the same résumé.

Milano Cortina denied the three-peat. Kim arrived with a torn left-shoulder labrum after almost no competition that season, scored 88.00 on her best run, and took silver behind South Korea’s Gaon Choi — a younger rider she had mentored for years. Choi’s winning run came after a heavy early fall; Kim’s final attempt washed out. She left Italy with a third Olympic medal, a hug for Choi on the podium, and a clear signal that the next halfpipe generation had arrived.

Kim’s pipe standard still shapes the event: amplitude, consistency under pressure, and a mainstream profile few snowboarders ever reach. Shoulder surgery and recovery come next. Whether another Games is worth that work is her call — from PyeongChang through Milano she already wrote an era of halfpipe dominance others will spend years trying to match.