Chloe Kim is the best female skier

Despite being born in 2000, Chloe Kim is arguably the greatest female snowboarder of all time, and could conceivably compete at several more Winter Olympics.

Chloe Kim is the best female skier

Despite being born in 2000, Chloe Kim is arguably the greatest female snowboarder of all time, and could conceivably compete at several more Winter Olympics.

The American first burst into the public consciousness aged just 14 at the 2015 X Games, when she became the youngest ever winner of a gold medal, taking the prize in the superpipe ahead of Kelly Clark. The records continued to tumble – she won X Games gold again the next year, and in the US Snowboarding Grand Prix, she became the first female boarder to land back-to-back 1080s. She has six Winter X titles, all in SuperPipe.

Kim was too young to compete at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games – an event she was already talented enough to win a medal at – and therefore her first taste of Olympic action came at the Lillehammer 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games. Kim was head and shoulders ahead of the competition, winning halfpipe and slopestyle gold. She also notched the highest score in YOG snowboarding halfpipe history, and acted as the USA flagbearer.

The stage was set for PyeongChang 2018. Kim was, for many, the face of the Games. A fluent Korean speaker whose parents were first generation South Korean immigrants to the US, Kim appealed to home and overseas fans alike. She won gold in the halfpipe, with a remarkable score of 98.25 points, ten points ahead of her nearest rival. It made Kim a household name around the world, and the youngest halfpipe gold medallist. She was the first athlete ever to win all four major snowboarding titles in the Olympics, Worlds, Youth Olympics and X Games.

She has since been on the front of the Corn Flakes packet, been made into a Barbie doll, and starred in several films and music videos. Kim was also admitted to Princeton University, but deferred entry until 2023 in order to concentrate on defending her Olympic title at Beijing 2022.