Chloe Kim must beat her protégés if she wants to make Olympic snowboarding history

MILAN — The Pyeongchang Olympics sparked two Olympic dreams.

There, Chloe Kim reached superstar status, winning at 17 to become the youngest woman to claim an Olympic snowboarding gold medal. At 11 years old, Bea Kim watched in awe.

“To see somebody who looked like me, who’s from the same area as me do something that incredible, I was like, ‘OK, wow,’” said Bea, a Palos Verdes native. “I want to do this.”

Eight years later, the pair of Southern California natives posed together for photos in matching red, white and blue outfits before the Milan-Cortina Olympics opening ceremony. The 19-year-old Bea will make her Olympic debut Wednesday at Livigno Snow Park next to Chloe, the suddenly 25-year-old veteran.

Chloe is still the top name in the sport. The two-time defending Olympic champion will try to become the first person to win three consecutive gold medals in snowboarding. But to make history, Chloe will have to get through some of the same riders she helped guide to this point.

From being the teenage phenom to the seasoned veteran, Chloe is navigating the world as someone still learning about it while balancing her position as a mentor to the sport’s next generation.

“It’s been a really beautiful journey to learn more about myself and kind of discover who I am as a 25 year old now,” Chloe said during a news conference in Livigno, Italy, on Monday. “Proud owner of a frontal lobe.”

She smiles through the pain and jokes through the struggle. Sometimes it’s physical pain, like the dislocated right shoulder she suffered a month ago and requires her to snowboard with a tight brace. Other times it’s much more.

One of the first sports stars to be raised in the social media age, Chloe has been the center of internet attention from the moment she won gold in Pyeongchang. She won hearts with her big amplitude off the halfpipe and funny pre-run tweets. Suddenly the girl who tweeted about being “hangry” right before dropping into the pipe was on red carpets, in Barbie doll boxes and featured in music videos.

It was everything she thought she wanted: fame, success and fortune. Then came the negative side effects: internet trolls, stalkers and racist threats.

Winning a second gold medal in Beijing, where she put up an untouchable 94-point score on her first run when silver-medalist Queralt Castellet was the only other competitor to break 90 points, extended Chloe’s dominance. But it forced her to wrestle with her relationship with the sport again.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to learn more about myself and what my boundaries are and what I’m capable of doing,” she said. “Maybe sometimes, I need to learn when to back off. And I think taking a lot of time off has been really important for me and my mental well being, because when I’m out there, I’m always giving it 150%.”

How aggressively and efficiently Chloe practices stands out to Bea every time they share the halfpipe. Bea, who is not related to Chloe, likes to take a few warm-up laps before she starts throwing tricks. By the time Bea is ready to start her tricks, Chloe is already two or three runs deep into her bag.

“She’s so incredibly intentional and has so much focus and purpose with everything that she does, whether it be snowboarding, whether it be playing her video games or being an older sister mentor to me,” Bea said. “She takes everything and puts her all into it. And I think that’s why she’s the best.”

With only a handful of halfpipes in the world, the best snowboarders congregate for month-long training sessions, but scatter back to their homes to reset between the camps. For the pair of South Bay natives, Chloe, from Torrance, and Bea spend their free time shopping, soaking up the sun or going to the beach.

They’re simply California girls at heart, Bea said.

“One thing that Chloe really showed me was just because you are a snowboarder doesn’t mean that you can’t explore other facets of your life,” said Bea, who is bound for Columbia this fall after the Olympics.

After Kim’s first Olympic medal, she tried to ease some of the pressure at Princeton, where she relished the opportunity to just fade into the crowd among her Ivy League colleagues. Some of them didn’t know anything about snowboarding at all. She loved that.

For years as the sport’s preeminent female star, Chloe tries not to stay in the spotlight longer than she has to. At news conferences, she will deflect questions by trying to include her teammates. While her left shoulder is the most talked about joint in snowboarding, she was quick to mention that teammate Maddy Schaffrick is dealing with the same problem in her right shoulder. Reaching over to hug Bea, Chloe seems to light up when she can talk about other riders.

Bea Kim competes in a World Cup event at Copper Mountain, Colo., on December 19.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Bea also trained at the same Mammoth Mountain club that produced Chloe. The powerhouse produced three of the four athletes on the U.S. women’s snowboard halfpipe team, including three-time Olympian Maddie Mastro. The world-famous club also has another medal contender in Gaon Choi of South Korea.

Chloe helped Choi begin training at Mammoth. She remembers when the 17-year-old South Korean star was only beginning halfpipe snowboarding. Seeing the same kids she mentored turn into Olympians makes Chloe feel old.

It also makes her smile.

“It’s really cool to see another fellow Korean girl out here killing it in a sport,” she said. “I think we’re starting to see a big shift in Asians being super dominant in sports.”

At 14, Choi broke Kim’s record as the youngest X Games snowboard halfpipe gold medalist in 2023. She is the top-ranked halfpipe rider in the World Cup standings with three wins this season. Bea earned her second World Cup podium this season, finishing third at Copper Mountain, Colo., in December.

Chloe qualified first in her heat at the event, but withdrew from the final because of the shoulder injury she re-aggravated in a training fall a month ago. The Olympics will be Chloe’s first competition this season after she purposely took on a lighter schedule knowing she already had her Olympic spot locked up last year.

Chloe quietly trained in the background and watched the sport progress to bigger tricks. She watched the Olympic women’s big air competition in awe. She eagerly awaited her next turn to push the sport forward again.

“We all kind of broke this glass ceiling, and now sky’s the limit,” Chloe said. “So I think going into this event, we’ll see a lot of incredible riding, we’ll see a lot of new faces, new names and some badass runs.”

Chloe has something in store as well: the run she’ll try for Olympic gold is something she’s never performed before.

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