Chloe Kim practices in the superpipe at the 2019 Winter X Games on Jan. 25, 2019 in Aspen, Colo.
Olympic champion Chloe Kim is so dominant that the big question going into Saturday night’s Winter X Games snowboarding superpipe competition wasn’t whether she’d win but how she’d do it.
After falling on her first run, the 18-year-old from Torrance, California held back on some of her more difficult tricks and combinations in favor of a solid second run featuring a frontside 1080 and cab 720. That scored an 84.00, which was enough to give her the lead and she had no challengers the rest of the night.
Kim, 18, now has five Winter X Games gold medals and seven total.
Spain’s Queralt Castellet was second with an 80.00 and China’s Cai Xuetong was took bronze with a 69.66. Olypmians Maddie Mastro and Arielle Gold finished sixth and eighth, respectively.
Kim was one of two U.S. women to earn snowboarding medals on Saturday, with Hailey Langland coming up with the silver in slopestyle.
Langland saved her best for last in her second event of the X Games. After scoring 71.00 and 75.66 on her first two runs to put herself in fifth place, the 18-year-old from San Clemente, California turned in a medal-worthy performance that was nearly a winning performance on run No. 3. She punctuated it with a huge cab 1080 on the final jump and scored a 90.66, enough to leap into second place and just shy of ousting New Zealand teenager Zoi Sadowski-Synnott from the top spot with her score of 91.00.
Langland also competed in the big air event on Thursday night but pulled out of that competition after the first run.
Five-time Olympian and three-time medalist Kelly Clark was honored prior to the start of the superpipe competition as “history’s most influential snowboarder of all time” with a video tribute prior to her making one last X Games halfpipe run. Clark announced her retirement earlier this week.
In the men’s slopestyle snowboarding, reigning Olympic gold medalist Red Gerard was fifth and Judd Henkes was seventh.
Olympian Alex Hall was the lone American in the big air skiing final and finished fifth.
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.
