Favored Kim looks poised for her star turn
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA >> Chloe Kim is superstitious.
Before each halfpipe run, the 17-year-old from Torrance and Olympic gold-medal favorite, knocks on her snowboard.
“I knock on my board to unjinx myself,” she said a few days before Monday morning’s (today on the West Coast) Olympic Games halfpipe qualifying.
“How many knocks?” asked Shaun White, the two-time Olympic halfpiper, sitting next to her.
“It depends on how nervous I am,” Kim answered. “If I’m really nervous I’ll just be going like knock, knock, knock,” Kim said, knocking on the table in front of her as she spoke.
That Kim, the daughter of Korean immigrants, knocked only three times was noted by local journalists.
The number four is considered bad luck in Korean culture. For instance, if you want to get off on the fourth floor of a Korean elevator, you push the button with the letter F on it in place of the number 4.
Four became the Korean version of “13” in part because the pronunciation of four sounds similar to the Chinese word for death.
“Four is actually my lucky number, so hopefully that is not true,” Kim said.
It’s a preference that has some in the Korean media concerned for Kim, who is viewed as something of a rock star in her parents’ native land.
Kim’s Korean roots have only increased expectations on an athlete who has been billed as a transcendent personality for an Olympic movement in desperate need of a breakout star to connect with a new generation.
“I don’t really think of it as pressure,” Kim said.
“I try not to feel pressure, because I feel like it kind of throws you off. I always try to focus on myself.
“But it does kind of creep into the back of my mind. I always just try to get into a positive way — you know ... that they are expecting all this out of me (and) they do that because they know I can do it, they believe in me.”