Winter X Games: Gaon Choi, 14, breaks Chloe Kim record to become youngest snowboard halfpipe champion
- X Games debutant Choi completes 1080 to seal first ever X Games gold for South Korea
- China’s Cai Xuetong and Su Yiming take bronze in respective events
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South Korean teen Gaon Choi bagged her country’s first ever gold at the Winter X Games in the US, becoming the youngest winner of the snowboard halfpipe event and breaking Chloe Kim’s record in the process
At 14 years and two months old, Choi was six months younger than the American when she set the previous record for being the youngest to be crowned halfpipe champion.
Choi, the world junior champion, landed three different 900s – switch backside 900 Weddle, frontside 900 and also a backside 900 (with a missed grab) – in her third of four runs in Aspen to overtake two-time US Olympian Maddie Mastro.
Making her X Games debut this year, Choi secured the gold medal with her fourth and final run.
She went switch backside 720 melon, backside 540 Weddle, frontside 1080 melon and Cab 720 truck driver.
“I am so happy, I am so glad my efforts [paid off] with a big win like this.” Choi said. “I expected that I could successfully manage a 1080, and I am happy I succeeded.”
Choi, who was undefeated in the halfpipe in her first year of junior-level FIS competition in 2022, surpassed the mark set down by Kim, who won the first of her five X Games Aspen halfpipe titles in 2015.
The pair have a connection that goes beyond Saturday’s achievement. Choi met Kim for the first time in Pyeongchang in 2017, when her peer competed at the Olympic test event.
From then on, Kim and her father would help Choi go to the United States to continue her training.
“I began snowboarding because of Chloe and now almost being near her level when she was 14, it feels weird that I can see a possibility that I would go beyond her someday,” Choi said. “I am already starting to look forward to the next Olympics.”
Two-time Winter Olympics gold medallist Kim also posted on social media.
“I feel like a proud Mom,” she said. “The future of snowboarding is in good hands.”
Kim, the only woman to land back-to-back 1080s in a contest, is taking this season off after defending her Olympic title in February last year, but the 22-year-old plans to return ahead of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games.
Mastro, who finished 12th and 13th at the last two Olympics, landed her patented double crippler, two back flips, on two of her runs to take silver and China’s Cai Xuetong took bronze.
It was Cai’s eighth appearance at the X Games, and the two-time world champion edged Ruki Tomita of Japan for her fourth X Games medal.
The 29-year-old won the SuperPipe silver in 2017, between two SuperPipe bronzes in 2016 and 2019.
In men’s Snowboard Big Air, China’s Su Yiming threw down a 1980 in his fifth and final run to snatch bronze.
Su, who became the first Chinese athlete to win a Big Air gold medal in last year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, only had one successful run in his first four attempts.
His 39-point second run put the 18-year-old in fourth place with less than two minutes to go.
Su then performed and completed a 1980 in his final run to score 48 points, sending the teenager from Jilin to a podium finish with 87 points, 22 ahead of Mark McMorris from Canada.
Norwegian Marcus Kleveland won gold with 96 points while Japanese Takeru Otsuka took silver with 90 points.
Su will take part in his second event, men’s Snowboard Slopestyle, on the final day of the event on Sunday evening, US time.
