Winter Olympics: Chloe Kim goes for gold in women’s snowboard halfpipe – live | Winter Olympics 2026
Key events
Mitsuki Onosecond after the first run, try a 900 instead of a 540 early in her run, but she fell after her third lap and did not improve her score.
Run 2 will have the same start order as run 1.
Wu Shaotong performs almost the same routine as his first but changes his fourth round from 540 to 900. His score increases accordingly.
70.25
Ranking after the first round
Reminder: Only the best run of the three will count.
88.00 Kim (United States)
85.00 Ono (Japan)
77.50 Bravo (Japan)
73.00 Cai (China)
67.75 Wu (China)
No one else has completed a race without a crash, so these scores really aren’t worth collecting here.
Chloe Kim is simply awesome.
There is no other way to describe it.
OK, let’s try – backside 720, switch backside air, switch double cork 1080…
A mere mortal, after successfully completing this trick, would make the rest of the way easier. She didn’t do it.
Good luck beating that.
88.00
Sarah Shimuzu (Japan) is another 16-year-old athlete and silver medalist at the 2025 World Championships. What were You what are you doing at 16?
His first turn is very graceful. Her second attempt was a double cork 1080 (two somersaults, three rotations), but she was unable to land this because her board hit parallel to the edge of the halfpipe.
10:50 a.m.
Look who’s next…
Maddie Mastro (USA) does a little visualization of his race before setting off. It’s very zen. She has two World Championship podiums, but finished 13th and 12th in her two Olympic races.
She goes big on her first round with two flips, but she can’t nail the landing.
5.50
Get up, congratulations (Japan) is only 16 years old, but finished fourth at last year’s world championship and second at the World Cup. She puts in a solid run that ends with a bang – a complete 1080.
It’s a 77.50.
Next stop: the United States Maddie Mastro, known for performing the most difficult tricks in the women’s half-pipe competition.
Cai Xuetong is in her fifth Olympics and finished fourth on home soil in 2022. She’s a three-time world champion, and she looks it. His biggest spin is a 900, but the variety of his tricks is fun to watch and it’s clean.
73:00
And Snoop is there. So it is Myles Garrettthe NFL star who is dating one Chloe Kim.
Choi’s score is 10.00, but that’s not the main concern at the moment.
Only two of the seven riders entered so far in the halfpipe have managed to make it through without falling: Mitsuki Ono (85.00) and Wu Shaotong (67.75).
Choi manages to get up and slowly slide down the middle of the pipe. It’s good to see, but you’d have to think his involvement in the rest of this is in doubt.
South Korea Goan Choi is Chloé Kim’s friend/rival. At just 17 years old, she is the World Cup leader.
Her first two tricks are incredible, but then she suffers a heavy fall. She grabs her board on the edge of the pipe and then tumbles headfirst to the base of the pipe. She is on the ground and receiving medical treatment.
Spain Queralt Castellet Ibanez is 36 years old. Yes, 36 years old. She won silver in 2022, improving little by little five at the previous Olympic Games (26th, 12th, 11th, 7th, 2nd) and has two podiums at the world championships.
It falls early. You have to wonder if this snow will make things difficult. A crew runs through the pipe to remove the new layer of precipitation.
4.75
of Canada Elizabeth Hosking finished sixth in Beijing and won silver at the 2023 world championships. She made her Olympic debut at age 16 in 2018.
And… wow. Each trick has great amplitude, she moves off-axis, and… oh, she falls at the end. This was shaping up to be something special. If she pulls off the same routine in one of her next two races, watch out.
27:50
from Japan Sena Tomita is the reigning bronze medalist. She is also experiencing difficulties and will not count this race.
11:50 p.m.
Bea Kim is only 19 years old and deferred his admission to Columbia University to do so.
She falls after her first trick. She gets up and does simple figures without twisting until the end.
7:25 a.m.which she obviously won’t want to count.
Oh my God. from Japan Mitsuki Ono I just did a race that could already put her on the podium. A 900, a small trick to recover, then a dazzling 1080 – it’s much more demanding than Wu’s run, and she nails it all.
85.00
China Wu Shaotong is first, and she may have a slight advantage because it’s snowing, which could slow down some competitors after her.
She’s smooth and has decent amplitude, but her tricks aren’t as delicate as some others in this area. Another feat to reach this final after finishing 22nd in Beijing.
67.75
Starting order for execution 1
1. Wu Shaotong (China)
2. Mitsuki Ono (Japan)
3. Bea Kim (United States)
4. Sena Tomita (Japan)
5. Elizabeth Hosking (Canada)
6. Queralt Castellet Ibanez (Spain)
7. Choi Goan (South Korea)
8. Cai Xuetong (China)
9. Rise Kudo (Japan)
10. Maddie Mastro (United States)
11. Sara Shimizu (Japan)
12. Chloe Kim (United States)
It seems that the border with the Pacific Ocean is a plus in this ordeal.
We left…
Meanwhile, in curling, three of the four current matches ended in a blank in the first end. I have a feeling a rule change will come in a year or two, perhaps taking the hammer (last move) away from the team that had it when a blank was shown.
The format
Each athlete gets three races. Only the best of three counts, giving them a margin of error that must be the envy of all figure skaters and gymnasts.
Judges look for amplitude (height), difficult figures and fluid execution.
If you’re not sure what a double cork is, check out this explanation from a few years ago.
Sports judged
Surely there are exceptions somewhere, but it’s worth noting that snowboarding and freestyle skiing events just don’t attract the same level of controversy as figure skating and gymnastics, right?
In the United States, many people wonder about yesterday’s ice dancing, to put it mildly. Laurence Fournier Beaudry And Guillaume Cizeron won gold – at least, according to four of the nine judges, and their margins of victory were enough to outperform the five judges who preferred Madison Chock And Evan Bates.
The controversy is fueled by some off-ice issues, such as Sean Ingle explain :
Gold went to controversial French couple, Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, with 225.82 points, after their routine earned them a best score of 135.64 pts. Not everyone in the arena was convinced such a high score was justified.
The two men, who teamed up last year when Fournier Beaudry changed his citizenship from Canada to France, have come under increased scrutiny. This is partly due to allegations from Cizeron’s former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, and the suspension of Fournier Beaudry’s former partner, Nikolaj Sørensen.
In January, Papadakis’ memoir, To Not Disappear, called Cizeron “controlling” and “demanding,” allegations he called defamatory. Asked last week about the book, Cizeron said: “I have said everything I have to say on this subject. »
In 2024, Sørensen was suspended for six years by the Canadian Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner for sexual abuse. The suspension was overturned by the Sport Dispute Resolution Center of Canada on jurisdictional grounds.
Off the top of my head, I can think of several similar controversies in figure skating (even one centered on a French judge, as is the case with ice dancing here), but I don’t see any in what we used to call “extreme” sports. What am I forgetting? Or is there a reason – the lack of a loaded story, the philosophy of post-Gen X athletes, etc. – who explains the absence of unpleasant debates in these sports?
Coming into these Olympics, there were a handful of notable athletes that we all knew we had to watch…
Ilia Malinin wasn’t at his best, but he still won gold for the United States in team figure skating and has a substantial lead in the men’s event.
Mikaela Shiffrin I had a confusing first run here.
Jordan Stolz has the first gold medal in a potential hat trick.
Jessie Diggins won bronze today in a courageous performance that left her groaning and clutching her bruised ribs in agony after crossing the finish line.
And now it’s Chloe Kimwhich shows no after-effects of a recent labrum tear. She was spectacular in qualifying, and who knows what she will have planned today.
As in all Olympic halfpipe competitions, she is certainly not the only snowboarder to watch. This one is going to be fun. The action begins in about 52 minutes.
Preamble
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here is how Chloé Kim won her last Olympic title, in 2022:
American snowboarder Chloe Kim became the first woman to successfully defend the Olympic halfpipe title, building an untouchable lead with a mammoth opening run and cruising to another historic gold medal.
Kim, who placed last among 12 competitors who qualified for Thursday morning’s final, set the bar high with a huge first run that included two 1080s and three laps on the course known as the Secret Garden Olympic Halfpipe, covering her mouth and falling to her knees in jubilation after seeing her score of 94.00 announced.
She fell in her next races while trying to start the 1260 – three and a half laps in the air – but the magnitude of her first foray was more than enough to take gold ahead of Spain’s Queralt Castellet, who won silver with a score of 90.25, and Sena Tomita of Japan, whose 88.25 was good for bronze.
Kim’s resounding victory took place in front of an audience that included her friend Eileen Gu, the California freestyle skier who won the big air freestyle gold medal Tuesday competing for China. The two kissed at the bottom of the pipe before Kim climbed back up for her final attempt.
“I was so proud of myself,” a delighted Kim said afterwards. “I had the worst practice ever. I probably nailed my run twice when I usually nail it eight times, normally, and it puts you in a weird headspace. It was so inconsistent. I didn’t want to feel all that pressure of having to nail my first safety run (in competition). runs).”
You can read the full report below:
