'She’s on her own level': Fellow halfpipe gold medalists on Chloe Kim's potential to make Olympic history
ZHANGJIAKOU, China – It’s hard enough to win one Olympic gold medal, let alone two. Just ask the female snowboarders who have tried in the past 20 years.
Most of them went on to win another medal, though they never got back to the top of the podium. So they know, more than anyone, the difficulty of what Chloe Kim is attempting – to become the first woman in Olympic history to take gold in the halfpipe for a second time.
“The stars have to align every four years on that one day everyone is watching,” said Australian Torah Bright, who won gold in 2010 before claiming silver four years later.
As hard as it is, Kim is the best positioned of anyone they’ve seen to attempt it. Here’s why, from the women who know exactly what she’s up against.
She’s been good for a long time
Their first memory of Kim is usually similar – meeting a little girl on a mountain who had a helmet with a face mask and could shred.
Hannah Teter, the 2006 gold medalist and 2010 silver medalist, thinks Kim must have been about 9 years old when they met in New Zealand. Teter remembers Kim’s dad, Jong Jin, getting her to ride switch, or in her unnatural stance, throughout the summer.
“She was just this little thing that you could see the gold just oozing out of her,” Teter said. “She was training young. Super young, training hard. When you see a kid doing that, you know they’re going somewhere.”
Bright met her at Mammoth Mountain when Kim was about 11 at an event where she was asked to present Kim with an award. She remembers Kim doing inverts on jumps.
“She was so adorable and we all knew that she was going to be around for a while back then,” she said.
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Kaitlyn Farrington, who won gold in 2014, first remembers meeting Kim at the U.S. Open around 2012. After winning the Junior Jam, Kim got to compete with the pros. She watched Kim do a “huge” frontside 900.
“I think all of us were like, all right, there’s the next girl,” she said.
She’s got the fundamentals down
Watch Kim compete, and it’s easy to see her difficult tricks and massive amplitude. But her fellow Olympic gold medalists keyed in upon the basic fundamentals that separate her as well.
Her transition riding between the walls stood out, and it’s something that helps her maintain speed and get the kind of amplitude to do the big tricks.
“She rides transition incredibly and will quite easily be doing the biggest airs of the day as well. What is impressive is watching her progress as a rider,” Bright said. “She hasn’t limited herself. She rotates every way.”
Her switch riding is key, they all said.
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Farrington remembers a day training in New Zealand around 2013. The other teams had left because the weather was terrible, but she was up there and so was Kim and her father.
“She was always working on something different, or riding the pipe doing full switch runs through the pipe for however many runs and then she’d go to doing regular runs,” Farrington said. “That repetition that she’s just been a hard worker her entire career and that’s really shown and paid off for her.”
She’s mastered the difficult
Perhaps more than anyone, Kelly Clark knows what it takes to ride at the top level. The gold medalist in 2002, she’d go on to win Olympic bronze in 2010 and 2014. At one point in her career, she won 16 contests in a row.
In many ways, she pushed the sport forward, including becoming the first woman to land a 1080. Kim became the first to do back-to-back 1080s. In Kim, Clark sees the intentionality to do what she wants, to be proactive in pushing progression rather than reactive.
“You’re talking about switch backside, you’re talking about McTwist, cab 10, front 10s, cab 9s, front 12s. It’s just astounding, just as a snowboarder,” Clark said, pointing to Kim’s vast arsenal of tricks. “I don’t know if the general public would see it and appreciate, but for me, I see it, and I’m like, do you know how hard that is?”
That array of tricks sets her apart. While many top riders will have one or two banger tricks – big, difficult ones they can land to be in contention – Kim has many.
“She’s on her own level up there. She rides like a guy, which is a huge compliment in our sport,” said Teter. “She just has that clean, smooth, style-y, crazy and goes huge. She’s always pushed it.”
She’s given herself options
Most riders have a qualifying run they can put down to get to a final and one or two they can do there to try to get on a podium. Kim has many ways to beat them.
Rick Bower, her coach on the U.S. halfpipe team, says she has two for qualifiers and five different finals runs.
“When she drops into the pipe, you can’t call her run from top to bottom like you can most other riders,” Farrington said. “She doesn’t have to put down her best run and can still win a contest. There’s just that confidence she has and well-deserved. She can put down her second-best run and still win any contest.”
If that weren’t enough, Kim is working on three new tricks that she plans to debut here. That’s almost unheard of in a sport where athletes spend months learning one or two new tricks in an Olympic year.
“The depth of her tricks and how many different varieties and combinations, it borderline makes her unstoppable because someone’s not going to be able to come in there and say, I’m going to beat her this way,” Clark said. “She’ll just try a different run that’s completely head and shoulders above the rest, too. She’s really set herself apart there, and that’s really unique in snowboarding and just so impressive. Just as a snowboarder, I’m like, how did you build that?”