Chloe Kim makes history with eighth X Games superpipe win
Snowboarder tallies most ever wins in women's pipe, ties for all time
The Aspen Times
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
Walls of ice and dark skies were once again no match for Chloe Kim, as she broke records on Saturday night.
The Californian won her eighth gold medal in X Games women’s superpipe, making her the woman with the most wins in the event. The medal takes her past retired snowboarder Kelly Clark, who tallied seven golds. Kim, 24, is now tied at eight with Shaun White for most X Games superpipe wins, men or women.
“It’s pretty crazy. I never thought I’d make it this far,” Kim said. “So everything else, honestly, is just a big cherry on top — and I’m really grateful.”
She laid down the biggest trick of the night, a double cork 1080 — or two inverts and three spins — landing smoothly in the middle of her first finals run, in which she earned the gold. Despite the significant “amplitude” — or distance flown out of the pipe — and clean landings of her runs, she said she was feeling off before the night began.
“So I was like, ‘Alright, let’s just make it through, land a couple runs, and see what happens,'” she said.
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From here, she said she’s got her sights on the 2026 Olympics.
Flipping twice on the first hit of her highest scored run, California’s Maddie Mastro put up a strong fight to take home silver. The 24-year-old won her third X Games superpipe silver and her fourth medal in the X Games discipline.
“I’m really happy. It was quite the battle for me. Things didn’t go exactly as they planned in practice, but that happens,” she said. “But regardless, I was happy that I was able to pull it together and land my runs.”
There is a small margin of error in halfpipe, she said.
“You’ve got to be very meticulous with how you’re doing it because (if you’re) a little bit wrong, you’re on the deck,” she said of the flat part on the top of each halfpipe wall.
Unlike large landings in slopestyle and big air, athletes can only land in one steep section of the halfpipe to avoid taking a hard impact.
The youngest competitor at the X Games also took home a medal. At 15, Japan’s Sara Shimizu won bronze while competing with the veteran X Games athletes.
“This has been my dream since I was a little kid,” she said.
