Olympic snowboarding champion Chloe Kim and actor Angelina Jolie headlined the list of big names from politics, business, sports and entertainment glamming up a fancy black-tie dinner that President Joe Biden hosted Wednesday for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Kim served up a classic understatement as she strolled in, telling reporters, ”I heard the food’s going to be really good.”
Guests seated at the head table with the presidents and first ladies included Jolie and her son and Kim.
“I didn’t wear my medal, I don’t know where it is,” Kim said, according to multiple reports.
It’s not clear if she was referring to her 2018 gold medal or her 2022 gold medal.
Kim, who turned 23 last Sunday, announced last April that she was taking a post-Olympic break from snowboarding competition and intends to return later in this Olympic cycle to bid for an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic halfpipe title in Italy in 2026.
Patti Zhou, an 11-year-old snowboarder from China who is too young for the next Olympics, finished runner-up in the Dew Tour halfpipe in Copper Mountain, Colorado, on Saturday.
Zhou’s 90.66-point run included a switch backside 900, cab 720, frontside 540 and backside 540, according to contest organizers.
Zhou finished second behind another phenom — 14-year-old South Korean Gaon Choi, who last month broke her mentor Chloe Kim‘s record as the youngest X Games snowboard halfpipe champion.
The five-woman final had zero Olympians.
Kim hasn’t competed since last year’s Olympics but said in April that she plans to return for a 2026 Winter Games bid.
Unless rules are changed, Zhou cannot compete at the next Olympics because, traditionally, the Olympic age minimum in snowboarding has been 15. Kim missed the 2014 Sochi Games because she was 13 at the time.
Raised in China, Zhou and her family settled into Silverthorne, Colorado. She jokes that she tells people she’s from, “Beijing, Colorado.”
In 2020, an 8-year-old Zhou posted video of her landing a 720 in a halfpipe, according to the International Ski Federation.
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.
