Perfect face of the Games
elementary school, traveling from competition to competition, living out of the family van, the next great thing before he was a teenager, beating people twice his age, signing endorsement deals, pushing snowboarding’s envelope, transcending action sports into the marketing mainstream.
Kim’s career has followed a similar arc, with similar expectations, with a similar Olympic launching pad, with similar rewards.
Kim became the youngest X Games medalist at 13, when she finished second behind Olympic halfpipe champion Kelly Clark. She’s the first woman to land back-to-back 1080s (three revolutions).
Clark, the sport’s matriarch, could see it coming, from the time when a tiny girl tugged at her sleeve and asked if she could ride the chairlift with her and then zoomed down the hill. It wasn’t long before Clark was calling representatives at Burton Snowboards and recommending they sign this kid. Other endorsements followed, and South Korea reportedly made a lucrative offer for her to compete for her parents’ homeland.
“I’m really excited to see where she pushes herself to, where she takes the sport to,” Clark said.
It started Monday with the qualifying rounds, and NBC conveniently moved the final to Tuesday morning in Pyeongchang so it would air live in prime time in the U.S. America, meet Chloe. She is the first mega Olympic star born in the 2000s, a child of social media, bubbly, effervescent, unfiltered. She’s, like, candid.
On her grandmother who lives in Korea: “She’s like the cutest little old lady I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s also really sassy. Like, if she doesn’t want to do something, she’ll let you know straight up. And you’re, ‘Whoa, Grandma, where did that come from? Simmer down.’ She’ll have her cane and, like, whack you.”
On her culinary preferences: “I really like the (Korean) bulgogi beef and rice cakes. (But) it’s like I always want American food. It’s like, I need In-N-Out. Need to go to Chipotle. Like, KFC, where you at?”
On her cultural identity: “I don’t really feel a click with the Korean culture, but obviously I have a Korean face and I feel like I can’t walk around telling people I’m straight-up American.”
Both parents travel with her now. Boran quit her job to spend the last year on the road, knowing that the little girl is growing up, that everything could be different after this month, that there is talk of college and moving out on her own.
And knowing that the prodigy they spawned will drop into a halfpipe in their homeland, race up its wall and launch into a twisting, spinning, soaring destiny.