Choi wins snowboard halfpipe title with third run
American star takes silver behind strong first round
The snowfall coming down on Livigno Snow Park on Thursday night helped produce one of the bigger Olympic upsets in snowboard history, as Chloe Kim’s bid to become the first rider to win three consecutive Olympic halfpipe gold medals fell just short.
Kim finished with a best score of 88.00 from her opening run, settling for silver behind surprise winner Choi Gaon of South Korea, whose heroic third run after an early fall earned 90.25 and rewrote the Olympic record books. Japan’s Mitsuki Ono took bronze with 85.00.
For a sport that has spent nearly a decade orbiting Kim’s technical and competitive standard, the result felt seismic – not because she rode poorly, but because someone else finally assembled the perfect combination of risk, execution and timing on the night it mattered most.
