Choi Gaon comes back from heavy crash to stun Chloe Kim in Milano Cortina 2026 Women’s Snowboard Halfpipe final

Gaon Choi (KOR) put together one of the gutsiest performances of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games so far on Thursday night in Livigno, returning to action after a heavy crash in her first run to deliver a stunning third and final attempt and thwarting Chloe Kim (USA) in her bid for a gold-medal three-peat in the Women’s Snowboard Halfpipe finals.

Choi’s fall in run one was the scariest moment of a Women’s Halfpipe final that had a few of them, as the 12 riders on hand pushed their limits in the Livigno Snow Park pipe. With the full medical crew deployed, it seemed for certain that Choi’s quest to stop Kim’s gold medal streak was over after just three hits. However, Choi elected to ride out of the pipe under her own power and was attended to by team doctors outside the finish area.

Dropping a few riders after Choi, Kim seemed unaffected by the shoulder injury she’d sustained five weeks earlier in training for the Laax stop of the FIS World Cup, putting down a score of 88.00 in a first run that was highlighted by a switch frontside double cork 1080 stalefish to frontside 900 tail grab combo.

Kim’s 88.00 would withstand all challenges through run two, including a second attempt by Choi that saw the 17-year-old again lying in the bottom of the pipe after washing out on her first hit. Heading into the final run of the evening it seemed almost certain that Kim was on the brink of becoming the first snowboarder in Olympic history to win three straight titles following her golds at Beijing 2022 and PyeongChang 2018. 

However, that all changed come time for the seventh drop-in of the third run, where Choi put it all together on the biggest stage of her young career.

Leading off with a switch backside 900 mute, Choi then went into a switch frontside 720 drunkdriver, into a frontside 900 melon, then a backside 900 stalefish, before finishing it all off with a frontside 720 frontside grab and leaving business to the judges, who would reward the run with a score of 90.25 and top spot with five riders left to drop.

While the score sparked jubilation among the Korean team, Choi would still have a nervous wait with four athletes to go before Kim set off. 

One of the most clutch performers in snowboard history, Kim appeared to be willing her way to history in her final run until it all went wrong on her third hit, where she washed out on the landing of the switch frontside double cork, handing a spot in the history books instead to Choi, as the first Korean Snowboard champion in Olympic Winter Games history.

Not that there were many questions about it before action in Milano Cortina, but by adding silver to her two previous golds Kim cemented her status as the all-time women’s Olympic snowboard great, making it three Olympic medals in three Olympic Game s and matching Kelly Clark’s (USA) total medal haul but surpassing her in podium stature. 

With a storming opening run that included a frontside 900 tailgrab on the first hit and a frontside 1080 tailgrab to switch fronts 900 stalefish combo further down the pipe, Mizuki Ono would earn a score of 85.00 to claim bronze, as Japan extended their snowboarding success at Milano 2026.

At 17, Choi is the same age as Kim when she won her first Olympic gold at PyeongChang 2018 when the Korean was nine.

She’s been on the World Cup circuit for three seasons and heads the current standings after three wins in three starts.

Only five women landed top-to-bottom in their first run with Kim joined by Ono (85.00pts), Rise Kudo (JPN, 77.50pts), Cai Xuetong (CHN, 73.00pts) and Wu Shaotong (CHN, 67.75pts).

The riders fared better on the second run, with Rise improving her score to 81.75pts and Cai to 80.75pts, although both Kim and Choi fell.

Then came the final round with Choi’s stunning comeback. 

While Choi described the outcomes as “the kind of story you only see in dreams,” Kim insisted she hadn’t paid any attention to talk of a potential three-peat.

Ono added Olympic bronze to her third places at the last two editions of the World Championships in 2025 and 2023.

“I just am really happy to get the medal with amazing girls,” she said. "They push me a lot, they inspire me. I’m just so happy.”