Medals update: USA’s Chloe Kim goes back-to-back for Olympic halfpipe gold

Chloe Kim of the United States won her second-straight Olympic gold medal in women’s halfpipe snowboarding on 10 February, soaring highest and spinning best in the best-of-three superpipe finals at the Genting Snow Park.

The American beat Queralt Castellet of Spain (silver) and Japan's Tomita Sena (bronze) – and only needed one run to do it – with another flawless performance. The distance between Kim and her closest competitor was a full 4.25 points.

The American was simply untouchable. Her first run was packed with high-risk/high-reward tricks and she pulled them all off in style. Throwing down a pair of massive 1080s, she effectively ended the contest right then and there.

The defending Olympic champion burst into tears at the bottom of the course immediately after her winning run – which brought a score of 94.00.

It seemed unlikely that anyone would unseat the California native, who’s won every women's halfpipe event she's entered since becoming the youngest woman to win Olympic halfpipe gold in PyeongChang in 2018 at the tender age of 17.

Castellet (who won her first medal in her fifth Olympic Games) and Tomita put up a good fight against the most-dominant competitor in the history of the women’s snowboard halfpipe, pulling off big runs, big tricks and big scores. But they simply didn’t have what was needed to get near Kim, who recently took time off from the sport to attend Princeton University.

She was devastating on the day and a worthy back-to-back Olympic champion of the pipe. She took her next two runs to push the limits ever farther. She fell trying a 1260 in her second run and third runs, which would have made her the first woman to ever the land trick in competition.

The Men’s snowboard halfpipe finals will