Student has become the master

Kim settles for silver as South Korean protege wins in halfpipe

- BY THỤC NHI NGUYEN

CHLOE KIM of the U.S., left, Gaon Choi of South Korea and Mitsuki Ono of Japan show off their hardware on the podium.

(LINDSEY WASSON Associated Press)

With a hug, Chloe Kim passed the torch.

The snowboarding superstar didn’t complete the Olympic three-peat, settling for silver in the women’s halfpipe on Thursday at Livigno Snow Park. But after South Korea’s Gaon Choi stormed back from a nasty fall in her first run to win her country’s first Olympic gold medal in snowboarding, Chloe Kim raced into the crowd to find the 17-year-old rider.

She pulled Choi into a tight embrace. The next snowboarding star has arrived.

“She's my baby,” Kim said smiling at a news conference after the competition. “... I'm so proud of her. Now I think I kind of know how my mentors felt when I came on the stage.”

Another Kim protege, U.S. teammate Bea Kim, finished eighth in the final Thursday in her first Olympics. Countrywoman Maddie Mastro failed to land a successful run after falling three times on her signature double crippler, the skill she mastered seven years ago when she became the first woman to land it in a halfpipe.

Choi met Kim at an Olympic test event in 2017 before the Pyeongchang Olympics. Kim and her family helped Choi begin training with the Mammoth Mountain snowboarding club. The South Korean rider started traveling to Southern California with her parents to train and immediately proved her potential by going undefeated in the halfpipe in her first year of junior-level competition with the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. This year, she’s leading the World Cup standings with three wins.