Chloe Kim did it again, soaring to another Olympic gold medal in the halfpipe.
Just as she did four years ago, she opened the competition by landing a score that no one could top. Kim knew it, too. When she got to the bottom of her first run, she put her hands to her head, fell on her knees in joy, and laughed, as if she had shocked even herself.
The performance came after an uncharacteristically bad warm-up, where Kim struggled to land her primary routine. Her coaches said that she was fighting off nerves. Kim said she arrived to the final “in a weird head space.