American snowboarder Chloe Kim takes silver in women

Chloe Kim fell short in her bid to become the first Olympic snowboarder to win three consecutive gold medals, finishing second to South Korea’s Choi Gaon in the women’s halfpipe on Thursday.

Choi dethroned two-time defending champion after he recovered from a nasty crash that had silenced the crowd. The 17-year-old sparked another collective gasp when she jumped into the lead with a score of 90.25 on her final run.

Kim had one more chance to get back to the top, but the 25-year-old American lost in her final race and settled for silver. The Japanese Mitsuki Ono took bronze.

Kim, whose parents immigrated to the United States from South Korea, had encouraged Choi throughout his young career. Now he has handed the Olympic title to the teenager he inspired.

“It’s about passing the torch, so there’s no one else I would have rather stood on the podium with than her,” Kim said. “I’m very proud of her and very excited to see what she does next.”

Choi’s chances in the final appeared to be in jeopardy when he crashed into the halfpipe slope and slid to the halfway point, where he remained for several minutes. After being treated by medical personnel, she left the course without help.

It wasn’t clear if he would return for his second run, but he did and he did it. Then it was his turn for the halfpipe which was good for winning gold.

Choi became the youngest winner of the X Games in 2023 at 14 years old. Now the first Olympian is the first non-American woman to win gold in snowboarding’s top event since Australia’s Torah Bright in 2010. Kaitlyn Farrington won for the United States in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics, and Kim triumphed in Pyeongchang and Beijing.

Kim injured her shoulder four weeks ago, which interrupted her preparation for the Games. He competed in a brace, which didn’t stop him from dominating the field in qualifying.

“Obviously, I’m really disappointed because I can’t snowboard until right before the Olympics, which is going to be hard,” Kim said last month in an Instagram post.

But after Thursday’s final, the California native said she would need shoulder surgery and that winning an Olympic medal of any color was a victory given that she was injured.

“I think there was a lot of talk about the treble,” he said. “I was thinking about it before, but I think the moment I got hurt I thought, that doesn’t matter anymore. So this feels like a victory because a month ago it didn’t seem too possible.”

Another gold medal celebration seemed likely after Kim scored 88 points in her first run, while Choi and most of the other finalists were annihilated.

But Kim couldn’t stay upright in any of the remaining races and her score in the first one wasn’t good enough.

In 2018, Kim became the youngest snowboarder in history. win an Olympic gold medal. After taking almost two years off to focus on her studies and mental health, she returned to competition and won her second consecutive Olympic gold in women’s halfpipe in Beijing.

Kim is not the only one who misses the milestone of gold medals in three consecutive Winter Olympics at these Games. Czech Ester Ledecka came up short in alpine snowboarding’s parallel giant slalom, as did Austria’s Anna Gasser in big air. Both were also two-time defending champions.

cool american snowboard Shaun White He won three gold medals in halfpipe, but not consecutively. He won in 2006, 2010 and 2018. He finished fourth in 2014.

White was in the crowd Thursday and cringed after Kim fell on her final run. Kim’s boyfriend, Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, was also in her cheering section, along with Snoop Dogg. Like many in the crowd, they had gathered to watch one of snowboarding’s biggest names go down in Olympic history.

Instead, they watched Choi wipe away tears as he held his medal, one step above the podium of the cyclist who has been his idol.