zen and the art of shredding

After two consecutive gold-medal runs at the Olympics, snowboarder Chloe Kim was burnt out on...everything. Here's how she got back on track and ready to rip it at the 2026 Milano Cortina Games.

- By Amy Wilkinson

WHEN CHLOE KIM BOUGHT her Los Angeles home in 2021, she found herself with an unused, and sun-drenched, spare room. She considered converting the space—adjacent to the dining area—into a gym but ultimately decided staring at a treadmill over the Thanksgiving turkey wouldn’t be the most aesthetic choice.

Instead, it became what Chloe calls her “zen room”—a “little jungle” stuffed with a rubber tree, fiddle leaf figs, a basil plant, and rare monstera varietals, including an albo, a mint, and a Thai constellation. (If you’ve ever tried—and failed—to keep one of those plants alive, you know what a serious green thumb Chloe must have.) With the addition of cozy furnishings, like a fuzzy bouclé couch and buttery Barefoot Dreams blankets, her zen room has become the perfect oasis.

“If you don’t see me in the house, I’m probably taking a nap in that room, with the door fully open and the breeze coming in,” says the 25-year-old.

The zen room isn’t simply a space in Chloe’s home; it’s emblematic of a profound pivot she’s made to prioritize her mental and emotional well-being, after the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing left her feeling depleted and contemplating leaving the sport. “At that point in my life, snowboarding felt like a really long relationship,” she says, likening it to a hot-and-cold boyfriend. “The good days were really good, and the bad days were really bad.”

But instead of breaking up and going no-contact with snowboarding, Chloe resolved to stick it out so it’s a Tuesday in November, and Chloe has had a long day. Her call time was 10 a.m., and after posing for her Women’s Health photo shoot (and video shoot) for the better part of six hours, she’s finally ready to sit down for this interview. Back in her street clothes—a red hoodie, a black puffer coat, and jeans, with her long, dark locks cascading down her back—Chloe is remarkably fresh and amiable, given the circumstances.