Chloe Kim makes her run in the snowboard women's halfpipe final at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 on Feb. 13, 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Chloe Kim closed out her gigantic 2017-18 season on Saturday by winning her third Burton U.S. Open women’s halfpipe title in Vail, Colorado.
Kim, a 17-year-old who captured the attention of the world after winning gold medal at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018, was back competing this week for the first time since that run in Korea nearly a month ago. She also found herself in an odd spot going into her third and final run in Saturday’s final — sitting in the middle of the pack.
After falling in the second of a back-to-back 1080 attempt on both her first and second runs, Kim decided to pull back on her third run and followed up her frontside 1080 with a 720. She put together a clean run the rest of the way and scored an 85.87 to jump from fourth to first place.
That bumped fellow Olympian Maddie Mastro, who qualified in first place ahead of Kim, to second place. Mastro, 18, dropped in last and went for the win on her third run but took a tough fall on a frontside 1080 attempt right off the bat. She finished in second place with a score of 82.99. Japan’s Haruna Matsumoto was third with 78.75 points.
Five-time Olympian Kelly Clark finished in fifth with a score of 75.25 in what could have been her last snowboarding competition. She told NBC Sports earlier in the week that she would end her season at the U.S. Open, then evaluate how she’s doing and what she has left to accomplish.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
