Aiming for another gold
The Team USA snowboarder was just 17 when she won gold at the 2018 Pyeonchang Winter Olympics, where she topped the podium in the women’s halfpipe becoming the youngest winner of the event in history. Her second run was almost perfect and saw her land not one but two 1080s as she secured gold.
She arrives in Beijing next month as the favorite to take gold in the event and with good reason.
Kim is the reigning Olympic, world and X-Games champion, plus a double Youth Olympic gold medalist – which is all the more impressive given the 21-year-old only returned to the sport in January 2021 after taking two years off.
She did not waste the time off the slopes – entering Princeton University as a student and recovering from injury amid a COVID-19 enforced hiatus for the sport – and she has not wasted any time since getting back on her board.
Kim has been on the scene since she was just 14, when she won silver at the 2014 XGames. It should come as little shock that her medal saw her enter the record books as the youngest X-Games medal winner.
She has won plenty more of them since – six X-Games golds in all – and it could be argued she might have won even earlier were it not for the rules. Kim qualified for the 2014 Sochi Olympics but was not allowed to compete as she was just 13 at the time and therefore too young.
“The Olympics. I think I wanted to go to when I was like 6. And then when I was 13 I qualified for Sochi. But I was too young as you had to be 15 and I was only 13,” Kim told comedian Kevin Hart in a recent interview.
The California native started snowboarding aged 4 and was competing in events two years later.
She has used her platform to great effect in recent months too, speaking up on the topics of anti-Asian racism and mental health, as well as climate change.
“I felt pressured to be perfect all the time, and it drained me. I was genuinely angry for a while because I was so concerned about what everyone else would think about me. It became toxic,” Kim told People of improvements she has made with her mental health and dealing with the superstardom that came with Olympic gold.
“That’s when I realized, I need to take better care of myself, and if I don’t want to do something, I can’t force myself to do it. It was very empowering for me, feeling like I finally had more control over my life. Right now I’m in a much better place.” She could be in an even better place in Beijing with a second gold.