At the age of 22, Chloe Kim has already accomplished a mind-boggling list of athletic feats, with many of them being firsts. She was the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding gold medal at the age of 17 in the women’s snowboard halfpipe, and she did it again in this past February’s 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where she became the first woman to win two gold medals in the halfpipe. She is the first woman to win two gold medals in snowboarding at the Winter Youth Olympic Games and is a six-time X Games gold medalist. She is the World, Olympic, Youth Olympic, and X Games champion in the halfpipe and the first to win the title at all four major events.
Kim, a second-generation Korean American, found her natural talent for snowboarding at the age of four. She started competing at the age of six and then spent her third and fourth-grade years training in Geneva, Switzerland, where her aunt lived. By 2013, she was on the U.S. Snowboarding Team.
From that point on, she seemed unstoppable. In 2015, Chloe won Gold in the superpipe at the Winter X Games, becoming the youngest gold medalist at that time at the age of 14. She was Team USA's flag bearer for the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games, becoming the first snowboarder chosen to serve as flag bearer for Team USA. Kim became the youngest woman to ever land two 1080-degree spins – that’s two triple rotations – in a row at the 2018 Winter Olympics, landing herself a position on Time magazine's annual “Time 100” list.
Then, a broken ankle in 2019 forced her to take a break. She took the opportunity to attend Princeton University, where she found a passion for French, indulged in her love of horseback riding, and sought out new friendships. After a full recovery, she returned to her sport and continued to rack up win after win.
Kim recently announced that she will be taking the 2022/23 season off from competition before launching her campaign for a third gold medal at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.