It’s one thing to win an Olympic gold medal, but it is another thing to win one as a 17 year old, as snowboarder Chloe Kim did.
The California native started snowboarding at the age of four when her dad would drive her up into the mountains to the closest ski resort, Mountain High. By the age of six she was competing for the resort’s team.
When she was eight, Kim went to Switzerland to train, and stayed there until she was 10, returning to California. Once back in the states, she started training at Mammoth Mountain, where other pro-snowboarders such as Shaun White train.
Kim competed in her first X Games in 2014, getting the silver medal in the Superpipe. This same year was the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and even though Kim was too young to compete, her scores would have qualified for the event.
In 2016 Kim became the first 16 year old to win two gold medals in the X Games. At the US Grand Prix later that year, she became the first woman to land back-to-back 1080’s, or three full rotations.
In the past couple years, Kim has become a growing name in the women’s snowboarding community, and was a favorite going into these 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. She did not disappoint, winning the gold in the women’s halfpipe for the US.