Women’s Snowboard Halfpipe: Choi Falls, Choi Gets Up, Choi Takes Gold

There is a halfpipe in the place where you fall down and get up. A so-called superpipe is used at the Olympic Games in Livigno, 220 meters long, the two side walls are 6.70 meters high, and the jumps over the edge for women are up to three and a half meters. If you want to survive in the halfpipe, you have to accept a lot of risk, fall down again and again and get up again and again. It’s an unforgiving place, landing on hard ice instead of soft snow. Dramas happen here on a regular basis, not least in the qualification competitions and training sessions of the past few days, when several athletes were injured. But what happened on Thursday evening in Livigno was a remarkable story even for the Superpipe.

In the first of three runs, Gaon Choi from South Korea fell and the audience was silent for a few minutes. With all the celebrities present, including boarders like Shaun White and rappers like Snoop Dogg, fueling the party, the silence can be particularly loud, even if this time it resulted in applause. After a while, Choi was able to get up, she cried, and when she got down, she said she considered giving up the competition. “Then I walked a bit and felt energy returning to my legs,” she said. A second run followed with the handbrake on, Choi seemed unsure at the finish. But then came the getting up. Or should we say: the uprising?

This third run by 17-year-old Gaon Choi was nothing different, ending Chloe Kim’s halfpipe reign with a score of 90.25. The American won the gold medal at the 2018 and 2022 Games and also presented it in Livigno: While one competitor after another fell in a nighttime competition under difficult snow and visibility conditions, Kim secured the lead in the first run. However, she no longer had an answer to Choi, Kim was only left with the silver medal ahead of the Japanese Mitsuki Ono.

“A month ago I didn’t know if I would even make it here,” Kim said later. She also struggled with injury problems and was able to train less than usual. That’s why the silver medal means “a lot” to her and in general: there’s no hostility to be felt in women’s snowboarding on the halfpipe either. “She’s my baby, I’ve known her since she was little. I couldn’t be prouder of her,” said Kim about the Olympic champion from South Korea, whom she helped after her fall: “Even after her first fall, I went to her and said: You’re really good at snowboarding. You can do it. Don’t worry about what happened.”

Chloe Kim hands over the gold medal to her successor from South Korea

Kim handed the gold medal on the halfpipe with great satisfaction into the hands of her successor, the representative of a new generation. “For a long time I won competitions by doing the same runs over and over again,” said Kim. “This new development has made me push my limits and try things I’ve never done before. If they hadn’t pushed me, I would never have seen how far I could go as a snowboarder.”

The first South Korean woman to win a gold medal on snowboard thanked Kim, the American with South Korean parents, the “role model” of Choi and probably most of the other snowboarders. Choi also thanked her parents, who traveled with her to Livigno, and the South Koreans at home who are experiencing the Olympics from afar this time. Even before the games, she said she wanted to get her entire country excited about the halfpipe. She couldn’t have done it better than with her story from Thursday. “I’m someone who gets stronger when she falls,” said Choi, whose strength only left her when she was no longer standing on the snowboard. She bravely limped out of the finish area below the Livigno superpipe, the gold medal dangling around her neck.