Gaon Choi breaks Chloe Kim record, youngest X Games snowboard halfpipe champion

Gaon Choi
Jamie Schwaberow/X Games
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South Korean Gaon Choi broke Chloe Kim‘s record as the youngest X Games snowboard halfpipe champion, winning at age 14 on Saturday in Aspen, Colorado.

Choi, the world junior champion, landed three different 900s in her third of four runs to overtake two-time U.S. Olympian Maddie Mastro. She then landed a frontside 1080 in her fourth run.

In a format introduced three years ago, athletes were ranked on overall impression of their best run over the course of a jam session rather than scoring individual runs.

Choi became the first Winter X Games medalist for South Korea, a nation with a best Olympic halfpipe finish of 14th. She is six months younger than Kim was when Kim won the first of her five X Games Aspen halfpipe titles in 2015.

“I began snowboarding because of Chloe Kim and now almost being near her level when she was 14, it feels weird that I can see a possibility that I would go beyond her some day,” Choi said through a translator, according to organizers. “I’m already starting to look forward to the next Olympics.”

Kim, the daughter of South Korean immigrants, posted that she has known Choi for almost a decade.

“I feel like a proud Mom,” she posted. “The future of snowboarding’s in good hands.”

Kim, the only woman to land back-to-back 1080s in a contest, is taking this season off after repeating as Olympic champion but plans to return ahead of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games.

Mastro, who was 12th and 13th at the last two Olympics, landed her patented double crippler (two back flips) on two of her runs, but it wasn’t enough. She was the last woman to beat Kim at the 2019 U.S. Open.

Earlier, American Colby Stevenson earned his second X Games ski slopestyle title, one year after taking silver in ski big air’s Olympic debut. Stevenson, who was one millimeter from brain damage in a 2016 car crash, capped his first two of four runs with 1620s, according to commentators, taking the lead for good after the latter.

American Alex Hall, the Olympic slopestyle champion, was seventh.

Later, Norway’s Marcus Kleveland three-peated in men’s snowboard big air, while Olympic champion Su Yiming of China took bronze.

Japan’s Reira Iwabuchi won women’s snowboard big air, highlighted by a triple underflip. The field lacked 2021 X Games champion Jamie Anderson (pregnant) and 2018 and 2022 Olympic champion Anna Gasser of Austria. Iwabuchi was fourth at the last two Olympics.

Gasser withdrew moments before the competition after suffering what she called a mild concussion in Friday’s slopestyle, where she was seventh.

Zoe Atkin became the first British female skier to win an X Games title, taking the halfpipe in the absence of Olympic champion Eileen Gu of China. Atkin had two 720s in her fourth and final run to overtake Olympic bronze medalist Rachael Karker of Canada.

Atkin, the 20-year-old and Stanford student and younger sister of 2018 Olympic slopestyle bronze medalist Izzy Atkin, was ninth at the Olympics and never previously won an X Games medal.

Gu withdrew on Friday with a knee injury from a training crash.

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Jamie Anderson, Olympic snowboarding champion, announces pregnancy

Jamie Anderson
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Jamie Anderson, a two-time Olympic snowboarding champion, announced she is pregnant.

“The most precious and beautiful I’ve ever felt,” was posted on Anderson’s social media. “So incredibly grateful.”

Anderson, a 32-year-old who is engaged to 2018 Canadian Olympic snowboarder Tyler Nicholson, plans to return to competition in late 2023 and try for one more Olympics, a fourth for her, in 2026, according to People, which reported she is seven months pregnant.

A rep for Anderson later clarified that while she is planning on the 2026 Winter Games in Italy, she will take her competitive future on a season-by-season basis beyond that.

“I wasn’t planning on retiring with or without the baby, but I’m just so excited to be able to share this experience with our family,” Anderson said, according to the magazine. “I can see Tyler at the bottom of X Games with the little one. I think that would be really sweet.”

Anderson won the first two Olympic women’s slopestyle titles in 2014 and 2018. She placed ninth this past February after a tearful run-up to the Games.

Anderson also took silver in the first Olympic women’s big air event in 2018. Her 21 career Winter X Games medals across all sites are tied for the record with Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris.

New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, 21, won Olympic slopestyle gold and big air silver in February after sweeping the titles at January’s X Games in Aspen, Colorado. Austria’s Anna Gasser, 31, repeated as big air gold medalist.

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Max Parrot the latest snowboard star to take competition break

Max Parrot
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Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot, who came back from 12 rounds of chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma to win slopestyle gold and big air bronze at February’s Olympics, will not compete this season but will keep training.

“After ten years of sacrifice and continuous efforts to win, I’m allowing myself to take a break to recharge my batteries during this first year of the Olympic cycle,” Parrot, 28, said in a press release.

Parrot, after earning his first Olympic medal in 2018 (slopestyle silver), was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma on Dec. 21 of that year. Thirteen months later, he came back to win the X Games Aspen big air title.

In the Beijing slopestyle final, Parrot won with a 90.96-point second run of three. He called it the best run of his career with a triple cork 1620, a triple cork 1440 and a triple cork 1620.

“Three years ago, I was laying down on a hospital bed going through cancer,” he said after taking gold. “It was never an option for cancer to beat me, but for sure I was scared a lot of time.

“I just try to smile all day long now, and the results comes with that as well.”

In May, Parrot and his fiancée, Kayla, welcomed their first child.

“With the arrival of my son, the desire to be present for my family is stronger than going to perform in competitions,” said Parrot, the most decorated Canadian Olympic snowboarder with a medal of every color.

Previously, two-time Olympic halfpipe champion Chloe Kim and 2018 Olympic big air gold medalist Sébastien Toutant announced they are taking the post-Olympic season off.

The snowboard season includes X Games Aspen in late January and the world championships in Georgia (the country, not the state) in February and March.

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