Like Shaun White Before Her, Chloe Kim Dazzles on Way to Winning Halfpipe Gold
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Chloe Kim, the 17-year-old who outsoared her helpless rivals to win the gold medal in the snowboard halfpipe
Tuesday, was sitting near Shaun White on the eve of the Olympics, when a question about pressure was directed her way.
Clark, who scored 83.50 on her third run, finished fourth at her fifth Olympic Games — she also has a gold from 2002 and two bronze medals.
“It’s just kind of the mental mind-set of having won,
and then having to win after winning, and win after winning after winning, you know?” White said, laughing.
After a solid first run on Tuesday, Kim went for back-to-back 1080s — she was
the first woman to land two in a row in 2016 — on her second try, but fell.
For the fourth time, he arrived as a favorite to win the Olympic halfpipe competition, looking for his third gold medal.
On her third and final run, with the gold medal clinched, she wanted to “one-up myself,” she said later.
“And then the motivation became just to solidify the fact that this is just who I am and what I do.”
White is a complex man — part athlete, part businessman, part cultural icon.
“I was 19, I had these huge contracts and deals and things, and my life was pretty much set, you know,” White said.
“I knew that if I went home with a gold medal knowing I could do better, I wasn’t going to be very satisfied,” Kim said at the bottom of the pipe.