Chloe Kim

Chloe Kim became an Olympic champion at age 17 at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, scoring a perfect 98.25 on her first run in the halfpipe final — a run so dominant that she did backflips on the remaining runs to keep warm. She repeated as Olympic champion at the 2022 Beijing Games, this time landing the 1080 — a trick she had been withholding — to defend her title in a performance that left peers speechless. Between Olympics, she took a gap year at Princeton, citing burnout and anxiety, returning to competition without losing a step. Her story is not just one of athletic dominance but of a young athlete navigating the psychological pressures of early stardom and Asian-American identity in a predominantly white sport, emerging more grounded and articulate than when she left.