Chloe Kim’s Olympic silver shouldn’t feel like a letdown. But it does

Chloe Kim earned a silver medal in the women’s halfpipe Olympic final, falling short of a third consecutive gold.
South Korea’s Gaon Choi, 17, won the gold medal with a score of 90.25 on her final run.
Kim competed with a dislocated shoulder that will likely require surgery after the Olympics.
Many competitors struggled with falls during the final, which took place in snowy conditions.

LIVIGNO, Italy – Chloe Kim stood at the top of the hill, staring down through the falling snow. At those United States flags. And the signs bearing her name. And Myles Garrett. And Snoop Dogg. And all the cameras and media there to document a special Olympic story. Her Olympic story.

For everyone else, this was a happening night.

For her, it was in that stare.

These were no longer the bright eyes of a fashion mogul or a global celebrity. This was the competitor, still there, showing up when the moment called for it. And, boy, this was that moment. It was about to produce snowboarding’s first back-to-back-to-back gold medalist. Or it wasn’t.

All the pressure was on Kim. She was in second place. Gaon Choi of South Korea had just posted a 90.25 to move ahead. So Kim’s coach told her she had two options. She could try to do her first run – a relatively safe one that earned an 88 – a little bit better. Or she could go for it.

“I said that I wanted to go for it,” Kim said, “because that’s what I do.”

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In one sense, it was fitting that this snowy mess of a women’s halfpipe Olympic final, during which more runs seemingly resulted in scary falls instead of celebrations, ended with another fall.

But because of who it was, it didn’t seem fitting at all. Once Kim, one of the greatest snowboarders in history, didn’t come through, an odd quiet fell over Livigno Snow Park. Not disappointment, necessarily, as much as just a hollow shock. The collective, instinctive letdown when a sports venue – dotted with celebrity vibes – expects to see something special, only to suddenly realize that wouldn’t be the case.

That quiet seemed unfair to Choi, a 17-year-old who was tenacious on this evening, bouncing back from an especially scary fall on her first run to unearth a gem of a finale, forcing Kim to beat it.

And the quiet, truthfully, felt a bit unfair to Kim as well. Most athletes get to celebrate a silver medal.

It wasn’t bad result for Kim in these Olympics. Not really. Not considering the fact she’ll likely need surgery when she gets back to the United States, she said, to repair the dislocated shoulder that hindered her Olympic prep and keeps “popping out all the time.”

“There was a lot of conversation happening about the three-peat and what not,” Kim said, “and I was thinking about it, for sure. But I think the minute I injured myself, I was like ‘That doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s just get there and see how far we can go.’

“This feels like a win to me because a month ago it didn’t seem too possible.”

Lofty expectations for another gold medal, perhaps muted when Kim arrived in Livigno, amped back up again when she crushed it during qualifying on Feb. 11, posting the same 90.25 score that ended up earning the gold medal the next day.

For most of the final, it didn’t appear as if there was an equal to Kim. More so, this thing was turning into an exercise in attrition. There were just so many falls. Longshots. Contenders. It didn’t matter. Everyone was struggling to make it through a clean routine.

The conditions – thick snow was falling heavy most of the event – probably had something to do with that. Same, too, for the pressure of the moment, with an entire field thinking it had to gamble on difficult feats, pretty much just to be able to beat Kim.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” said Team USA’s Bea Kim (eighth place) of all the falls, “but I think it’s the Olympics, and everybody is feeling the energy and wants to throw down their biggest tricks and put on the greatest show and show everybody what they’ve been working on for the past four years. Heart goes out to all the girls who’ve kind of crashed a little bit and taken a beating.”

Among the 12 first runs in this competition, seven resulted in falls.

Chloe Kim’s wasn’t one of them, in part because she’d observed what happened to the others.

“I’ll admit I went pretty safe on it,” she said. “Didn’t go as big as I was in practice. Mainly because I was watching all these girls take slams, and I was like, ‘Let’s just get to the bottom.’”

That initial score of 88 was good enough to keep her in front until midway through the final stage, but it proved beatable. Choi finally was able to exceed it after Chloe Kim, too, fell on her second run.

Leaving that one final chance for one of snowboarding’s all-time greats.

“I couldn’t come through,” Chloe Kim said. “But all good.”

In this instance, both things can be true.

Reach sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@gannett.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social