Chloe Kim dazzles in Halfpipe; USA takes home two more medals

Chloe Kim, the USA’s newest golden girl of the halfpipe, lived up to the hype Monday night with two amazing runs as she took home the gold and America’s Arielle Gold took the bronze.

On Kim’s first drop-in, she put in a gold-worthy performance that included a picture perfect 1080, a 900, an inverted 540 with an indie grab and a 720 to finish pulling a 93.75 from the judges – a score that would prove to be enough for a gold medal, but not for Chloe.

She decided to go for back-to-back 1080’s, a feat she was the first woman to land, on her second run in hopes of improving her score and ensuring the gold, but didn’t land it. China’s Liu Jiayu improved on her first run score pulling in a 89.75 and second place. USA’s Maddie Mastro and Arielle Gold fell on their first two runs leaving them desperate for a third-run success if a medal was to be in their future.

Arielle Gold came up big in the third run posting an 85.75 to secure bronze. Jiayu went after Chloe by throwing down an epic run right up until the final hit – a 1080 which she failed to land.

By the time Kim came up for her third run, she already knew a gold medal was hers as the rest of the pack had failed to best her first score, but she wasn’t going home without landing those back-to-back 1080’s and making a run at a perfect, 100-point, score.

“I knew if I went home with a gold medal knowing I could do better, I wouldn’t be very satisfied,” Kim said. “I wanted to do the back-to-back 10s. I wanted to go bigger.” And she did.

The world watched as the 17-year-old snowboarding phenom launched into her glory run. Starting with a big frontside air, she then turned in not one, but two 1080’s back-to-back during a fantastic run that pulled a 98.25 from the judges. Her second-best score would have taken the gold and the only one that could beat that score was Chloe.