Chloe Kim suffered heartbreak at the Winter Olympics on Thursday after a nightmare slip cost her a historic snowboard three-peat.
While being cheered on by NFL-star boyfriend Myles Garrett, as well as A-list buddy Snoop Dogg, the Team USA great, 25, fell on the last of her three runs in the women’s halfpipe final, meaning she surrendered her Olympic title to 17-year-old South Korean sensation Choi Gaon.
Kim, who successfully defended her crown in 2022, narrowly missed the chance to become the first snowboarder in history, male or female, to win three consecutive gold medals in her respective event, with her top score of 88.00 not enough to trump Choi’s incredible 90.25 run at the Milan-Cortina Games.
Instead, she had to settle for silver while Japan’s Mitsuki Ono claimed the bronze.
Kim previously captured women’s halfpipe gold at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and Beijing, but entered the 2026 Games coming off a nasty injury.
In mid-January she announced that she had torn her left labrum, a type of shoulder joint cartilage, while training out in Switzerland, meaning she was unable to practice until ‘right before the Olympics.’
Chloe Kim failed to secure a historic three-peat in the Olympic women’s halfpipe on Thursday
NFL-star boyfriend Myles Garrett watched on as Kim suffered an agonizing fall in her final run
Despite the injury scare, Jim hit the ground running with a superb opening run that scored 88.00, while seven of the other 11 competitors all suffered costly falls.
Choi took a hard tumble on her first run before stunning Kim and the rest of the crowd gathered on a snowy night in the Italian Alps.
The teenager slammed into the incline of the halfpipe and slid to the middle of the course, where she remained for several minutes. After being attended to by medical staff, she rode off the course unassisted.
It wasn’t clear that she would even come back for her second run, but she did and got it down. Then came her turn down the halfpipe that was good for gold.
Choi became the youngest X Games winner in 2023 at age 14. Now the first-time Olympian is the first non-American woman to win gold in snowboarding’s premier event since Torah Bright of Australia in 2010. Kaitlyn Farrington won for the US in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics, and Kim triumphed in Pyeongchang and Beijing.
The later will leave Milan-Cortina with the unfamiliar feeling of being second best, with a nightmare third run costing her a place in the Olympic history books.
Snoop Dogg was also seen supporting the USA great with an incredible custom-made jacket
But Kim’s reign as Olympic women’s halfpipe champion is now over after Thursday’s final
South Korean sensation Gaon Choi, 17, instead claimed gold with a best score of 90.25
Kim settled for the silver medal this time around, while Japan’s Mitsuki Ono earned bronze
Garrett, the star Cleveland Browns defensive end she has dated for close to a year, made the long journey to Italy from the San Francisco Bay Area after last weekend’s Super Bowl to support his girlfriend in her bid to make history.
Snoop Dogg, meanwhile, showed up in a custom-made Chloe Kim jacket to make it very clear who he was rooting for in Livigno.
Yet the Browns player and legendary rapper could only watch on as Kim slipped at the very last hurdle, meaning her reign as Olympic champion is now over.
The former champion, with a huge smile on her face, went straight over to congratulate Choi after appearing to not take the defeat too bitterly, before Garrett was seen consoling her.
