Eight years ago, Chloe Kim took the world by storm, becoming the first woman to stomp back-to-back 1080’s in Olympics competition to claim gold in Pyeongchang. Kim then won again in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, posting a strong 94.00 in the first run of the final and prompting the TV announcers to declare her victory before any athlete had taken her second and third runs. Her victory was that inevitable.
At 1:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. local), Kim will go for more history. No snowboarder, male or female, has ever won gold medals at three consecutive Olympics in any discipline, and only Shaun White, who claimed gold in the halfpipe in the 2006, 2010, and 2018 Games, has three golds in any event.
Kim is a -250 favorite to take home the gold at DraftKings Sportsbook, which would be the United States’ first snowboarding gold of these games. South Korean wunderkind Gaon Choi, who was inspired to take up the sport by Kim, has +250 odds of claiming gold, and Sara Shimizu of Japan has +600 odds.
Women’s Snowboard Halfpipe prediction, pick
Kim is still a strong favorite in her quest for snowboarding immortality, is one of the faces of these Games, and, at 25 years old, is still near the peak of her powers. However, she’s faced more challenges this season than she did in the lead-up to either the 2018 or the 2022 Games. Kim sustained a torn labrum in January, which held her out of practice until two weeks ago and will require surgery after the Games. She hasn’t competed in a final since March 29, 2025, when she won the World Championships in Switzerland, her third World Championships victory to go along with 12 World Cup wins, two Olympic golds, and a record eight X-games golds.
But Kim didn’t look as if she’d missed a beat in Wednesday’s qualifier, linking a switch 1080 into a front 900 to finish with a 90.25 on her first run, the only competitor to record a score north of 90. Her performance earned a raucous reaction from the crowd at Livigno, including White and her boyfriend, NFL Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett. She remains the only woman to land back-to-back 1080’s in competition, though Choi landed multiple in the same run at age 15. Kim has also landed a 1440, though only in practice.
With no other woman quite capable of pushing Kim when she’s at the peak of her powers, the question remains whether she can land a clean run. If she does so — especially if that run includes a 1440 — she will return with her third straight Olympic gold, and with only the best of three runs counting (compared to two in the FIS World Cup) her odds are fairly high. The three-run format is also used during the X-Games, in which she’s managed eight victories in 10 appearances.
How the rest of the podium will fill out carries more intrigue. Shimizu was second in qualifying, and she beat Kim at the Copper Mountain World Cup event at just 15 years old, linking back-to-back 900s in that run. Choi generates nearly as much air with her boosts as Kim, but she managed to qualify only in sixth. Instead, it was Kim’s compatriot, Maddie Mastro, who qualified in third after nailing a double backflip on the first run. The two-time Olympic competitor has only won one World Cup event, but she is peaking, having finished second in the overall standings in 2023-24 and winning it in 2024-25. She also has four X-Games medals.
Perhaps it’s too chalky to suggest that top three finishers in qualifying will end up finishing as the three medalists, especially with Choi lurking, but any athlete who can land a double-cork 1080 is a podium threat, and only the three top qualifiers have ever done that in competition.
