Snowboarding-South Korea's Choi upsets Kim to claim women's halfpipe gold

LIVIGNO, Italy, Feb 12 : South Korea's Choi Ga-on denied American Chloe Kim a three-peat in the women's snowboard halfpipe at the Winter Olympics on Thursday, staging a stunning comeback from a crash to win gold on a snowy night in the Italian Alps.

Kim took silver, while the bronze went to Mitsuki Ono of Japan in the mountain town of Livigno, near the Swiss border.

The 17-year-old Choi, making her Olympic debut, looked like she would have to withdraw after she flipped upside down and crash-landed in the first of three runs.

She sat on the ground for several minutes as medical staff attended to her before riding down on her own and in the second round she fluffed a landing and fell backwards.

Choi shook the disappointment off, however, delivering complex jumps and clean landings in her third attempt to post a stunning score of 90.25, lifting her above Kim's leading 88. Only the best score from the three runs counted.

"It's the kind of story you only see in dreams, so I'm incredibly happy it happened today," Choi said.

She told reporters that she hurt her knee in the fall and had trouble walking immediately afterwards.

"After the first run, I actually cried really hard, thinking maybe I should just quit the Olympics here," Choi said.

"But the thought kept coming back to me: 'You can do this. You have to go on'. That's what pushed me forward," she added.

Kim, recovering from a shoulder injury, had a final chance to grab gold but fell backwards on a landing. Choi began crying when she realised Kim's mistake guaranteed her victory.

NO CONSECUTIVE THREE-PEAT

The halfpipe features riders sliding across a 22-foot-tall, U-shaped ramp and performing acrobatic manoeuvres in the air. Kim took halfpipe gold at Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing