Teen snowboarder channels resilience to capture 1st career gold

Choi Gaon of South Korea reacts after seeing her score of 90.25 points in the final of the women's halfpipe snowboarding event at the Winter Olympics at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, Italy, Thursday. Yonhap

MILAN — The way South Korean snowboarder Choi Gaon bounced back from a huge fall to grab an improbable gold medal at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics on a snowy Thursday in northern Italy was a microcosm of how her career has evolved over the years.

Shaking off a serious fall that could have ended her dreams, the 17-year-old Choi won the women's halfpipe title in her Winter Games debut with 90.25 points at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, some 140 kilometers north of Milan. It was South Korea's first gold medal of this year's Winter Games and also the country's very first gold medal in a snow sport.

Korean American icon Chloe Kim took the silver medal with 88.00 points, coming up short of becoming the first snowboarder to win three straight Olympic gold medals. Mitsuki Ono of Japan got the bronze with 85.00 points.

The 12 finalists each performed three runs and only the best score of the three counted. And Choi got her winning score in her final opportunity.

She fell hard while trying to land her second move during her first run, hitting the lip with her board and tumbling down the vertical wall. She stayed down on the flat section for a few minutes while being tended to by the medics on the scene.

After earning just 10.00 points, Choi summoned enough strength to move off the U-shaped structure under her own power but quickly dropped to the ground again in apparent pain.

And before her second run, the dreaded "DNS (Did Not Start)" sign flashed next to Choi's name. And considering the look of her fall, no one would have been surprised if Choi had decided to withdraw right then and there.

Instead, Choi came back out to the hill for her second run. She had the backing of a supportive crowd but failed to complete her first move.

When the teenager returned for the third and final run, few would have imagined Choi had enough left in her tank, physically or mentally, to even complete her run, let alone contend for a medal.

But this is an athlete who once missed more than a year after fracturing her back during competition and still came back to compete at a high level again. She wasn't going to be denied on this night in Italy.

Choi went for some conservative moves in the third run and it was a shrewd decision, with one boarder after another failing to land their moves cleanly amid snowy and windy conditions.

Choi was already crying before her final score was announced. Then the unthinkable happened, as Choi ended up with the best score in the field with five boarders remaining. No one, not even Kim, could match that.

Choi, soft-spoken as she may be off the slope, is so competitive that she once said her inability to perform due to that back injury was more painful to her than the injury itself. That kind of fire served her well Thursday.

Choi marked her return from back surgery with a World Cup bronze medal in early 2025. Then during the 2025-2026 season, Choi claimed three World Cup titles in a row to cement her status as an Olympic medal contender.

Kim still loomed large in Livigno as the two-time defending champion, despite a torn labrum in her left shoulder that kept her off the World Cup circuit. The Olympics final on Thursday was her first final of the season.

Kim showed her class with her exquisite first run but Choi ended up beating the very boarder she grew up idolizing.

Kim said earlier this week that she sees herself in Choi, whom she has known for years. And Choi just may have started walking down the same path that Kim has traveled.

Kim won her first Olympic gold at 17 at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, and Choi is about seven years younger now than Kim was at that point.