Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist Chloe Kim Is Progressing Women’s Snowboarding For Progression’s Sake

Chloe Kim fell on two of her three runs in the Olympic women’s snowboard halfpipe final—but she was okay with that.

In her first run of Wednesday night’s final (Thursday morning in China), Kim put down the best run of the entire contest, scoring a 94 with a huge method air, frontside 1080 tailgrab, cab 900, switch backside 540 and finishing with a cab 1080.

An emotional Kim told the NBC broadcast camera that she was coming off the “worst practice of [her] life.” She shed tears of joy and sheer relief.

No other woman could match Kim’s score; the closest was silver medalist Queralt Castellet’s 90.25 on her second run. Japan’s Sena Tomita, whose run also featured a 1080, rounded out the podium with bronze.

Kim became the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic snowboard halfpipe gold medals. Since the discipline’s debut at the Nagano 1998 games, the gold-medal winners have included Germany’s Nicola Thost; the United States’ Kelly Clark at Salt Lake 2002 and Hannah Teter at Torino 2006, Australia’s Torah Bright at Vancouver 2010 and the United States’ Kaitlyn Farrington in Sochi 2014.

Then, Kim and Kim.

Kim’s gold medal was only the United States’ second of these Games; snowboardcross veteran Lindsey Jacobellis won the first earlier on Wednesday.

Remaining in first place with a comfortable lead after that first run freed Kim up on her second and third run not to worry about putting down the most technical and meticulous run—hitting all the beats the judges look for, including amplitude, difficulty, variety, execution, and progression. Instead, she focused fully on that last element—progression.

No woman has ever landed a 1260 in a halfpipe competition. Kim decided to try and become the first.

All season, Kim had been teasing that she had three new tricks she was hoping to put down in a competition run. We know one of them was the frontside double cork 1080—the same trick she started her gold-medal-winning run with in Wednesday’s final, but adding two off-axis flips to it. She landed that for the first time in training camp in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, this October.

Another, we know now, was the 1260.

After her first run, Kim was caught on camera telling her U.S. snowboard team coach, Rick Bower, she was going to go “10, then 12.” That could only mean one thing—after her frontside 1080, she was going to try for the 1260.

Women’s halfpipe snowboarding has progressed rapidly in the last four years—with Kim leading the way. Kim landed the frontside 1260 for the first time in practice in 2018.

After her Pyeongchang 2018 win, and indeed up through the Beijing 2022 Games, Kim has never needed to put down back-to-back 1080s again to win a halfpipe competition. She’s still the only woman who has landed it.

But progression has advanced in other ways. In 2018, Kim’s U.S. snowboard teammate Maddie Mastro, who also considers California’s Mammoth Mountain her home base, became the first woman to land a double crippler (two backflips). In November 2021, one month after Kim became the first woman to land the frontside double 1080, Mastro landed it as well.

It was the trick-oriented Mastro’s hope to land the double crippler or the frontside double 1080 at the Games and show world how high women’s snowboarding can soar. But she wasn’t able to make it out of qualifying—in fact, Kim was the only American woman in the 12-rider halfpipe final.

Kim didn’t land either of her attempts at the cab 1260. But the gauntlet has been thrown down. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the first one landed well before the Milano Cortina 2026 Games.

After qualifying on Tuesday, Kim told NBC Sports she wasn’t sure how many more Olympics she was going to do. Kim’s complicated relationship with competitive snowboarding and the spotlight has been well-publicized; she took nearly two years off the sport after her first Olympics in 2018.

When she returned in January 2020, she was still at the top of the sport. It was as though she had never left. She finished first at that January 2020 Laax Open, X Games Aspen, world championships and the Aspen Grand Prix. This season, she finished in first at Dew Tour and again at Laax.

Speaking to NBC after her win, Kim called progression “so important.” She had only landed the cab 1260 once in Beijing during practice. “I’m honestly super proud of myself for even going out there and trying to do it, it’s a very new trick,” Kim said. “I’m really looking forward to being able to land it. Maybe at the next one.”

Progression often happens when riders are forced to try new tricks to land on the podium. At the 2018 Games, Shaun White famously attempted—and landed—back-to-back double 1440s for the first time ever in his battle with Japan’s Ayumu Hirano to secure gold.

But what Kim wanted to do in Wednesday night’s final amounts to progression for progression’s sake. Attempting a relatively new trick she hadn’t trained on much is dangerous, and the score didn’t demand that she do it.

That’s why it was so special.

Kim must make the decision that is right for her about what the rest of her career would look like. She did tell NBC that she’s in a “much better headspace” now than she was after her first Olympic gold, and has a better idea of what to expect.

The world sure would love to see what her gold-medal-worthy run might look like at Milano Cortina 2026.