Choi Gaon of South Korea celebrates on the podium after winning the gold medal in the women's halfpipe snowboarding event at the Winter Olympics at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, Italy, Thursday. Yonhap
MILAN — Choi Gaon captured the women's halfpipe snowboard title at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics on Thursday for South Korea's first gold medal of the competition staging a miraculous comeback after taking a nasty fall that appeared to have dashed her hopes.
Choi, 17, scored 90.25 points in the final held at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, some 140 kilometers north of Milan. She denied Korean American superstar Chloe Kim a historic third straight gold, with Kim taking the silver medal with 88.00 points.
Mitsuki Ono of Japan got the bronze with 85.00 points.
Choi's is the first Olympic gold medal for South Korea in a snow event. The country had two silver medals and one bronze medal away in snowboarding prior to Thursday, including a silver and a bronze at this year's competition.
Choi also became the youngest women's halfpipe gold medalist, breaking Kim's previous record, set at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, by about seven months.
The 12 athletes in the final each took three runs, and the best score of the three counted as their final score. The highest and lowest of the six judges' scores were discarded.
In halfpipe, boarders perform acrobatic spins, flips and board grabs on a 22-foot, U-shaped structure. They are judged on the degree of difficulty, height and execution of their moves.
And Choi appeared to suffer an injury while attempting her second move during her first run.
She opened with a switch backside 900 with a mute grab, taking off from her non-dominant stance and rotating 2 1/2 times with the front hand grabbing the toe edge of the board between the bindings. But then Choi hit the lip of the halfpipe while trying to complete her second move, a caballerial 1080 stalefish, which involves a switch frontside entry, three full turns and a stalefish grab.
Source: Korea Times News
