When Kim won gold in women’s snowboard halfpipe Monday, her former teacher Jamie Aleman said she had a feeling this day would come. To her, it meant everything.
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“I am a little overwhelmed”, said Kim, who is certainly a star in the United States and South Korea after her display.
Wearing the No. 1 bib, Kim pumped her fists and laughed as she completed her successful first run. “I never imagined she’d finally arrive as a 17-year-old professional snowboarder girl”.
Arielle Gold, a 22-year-old who snuck into the 12-rider finals with a 12th-place qualifying run, stole the bronze medal with a tremendous final run, improving on her previous best run by more than 10 points with an 85.75. She was 11 years and 302 days old. But halfpipes are hard, the snow is slippery and nothing is for sure. She was an easy favorite going into the event.
“You wait for four years and it’s pretty nerve-wracking”.
How old do you have to be to compete in the Olympics?
“My first goal was to land all of my runs here”, Kim said, “but I kind of messed that up on my second run today, so I’m kind of annoyed”.
She didn’t have to do it. Instead, she attempted to add an exclamation point by landing her most technical sequence of tricks – the back-to-back 1080s.
China’s Liu Jiayu qualified second with 87.75 ahead of Japan’s Haruna Matsumoto (84.25).
“She is my American dream”, he said.
Kim would have made the Olympic team easily four years ago, only to have the calendar get in the way.
“You’d be hard-pressed to create a more promising brand spokeswoman in a lab”, Sports Business Journal said recently.
By now we all know Chloe Kim; teenage snowboarding wunderkind, ice cream enthusiast, A+ tweeter and now, Olympic gold medalist.
The likes of Nike, Toyota, Visa, Samsung, Oakley and a Korean cosmetics company are already on board the Chloe Kim bandwagon. “She’s handled success and pressure with grace and class, and it’s refreshing”.
Her parents are from South Korea.
With Kim’s gold, the USA has swept gold in every snowboarding event so far.
Kim has been aiming at the Olympics for a long time.
Kim admits it can be hard to know how to identify yourself when you love two countries, especially when you can only compete in the Olympics with one team.
She put on quite a show, and she will be rewarded in ways large and small.
But deep down, she knows where the real thanks belonged. She tweets about being “hangry” to her followers, and asks about ice cream between runs on the half pipe.
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“I’m so used to America, used to the traffic in L.A., and I don’t really feel it click with the Korean culture”, the athlete told the Washington Post earlier this month.
