COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo. (AP) — Chloe Kim sat out with an injury. Shaun White has been retired for four years. Without them, the world got a peek at what snowboarding on the halfpipe looks like heading into the Winter Olympics: It is now a sport dominated by Japanese, with other Asian stars in the mix.
Japan’s Ryusei Yamada and Korea’s Gaon Choi won the men’s and women’s World Cup events Friday at Copper Mountain on a blustery day that featured only one American on either podium: 18-year-old Bea Kim, who took third in the women’s contest, ahead of Japan’s Sena Tomita.
America’s Chloe Kim competed in qualifying Wednesday but suffered an undisclosed injury in the lead-up to the final and sat out. U.S. Ski and Snowboard didn’t provide details about the injury. This was the only pre-Olympic event Kim had signed up for, and how missing this final might impact her upcoming schedule remains to be seen.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist is the only U.S. halfpipe rider already qualified for Milan Cortina, as the American team looks for someone to join her as the sport’s headliner now that White, the three-time Olympic champion, has retired.
Without Kim in the lineup, the women’s contest played out like what’s expected to be a pretty good battle for second in Italy come February.
Choi’s win comes one week after her victory at Secret Garden in China. She was one of the few to try a 1080-degree jump and the only one to land one as part of a clean run over the 16 trips the eight healthy women in the contest took down the halfpipe.
Nobody really tries doing what Kim pulled off four years ago in China to win her gold — spinning all four ways on her jumps down the halfpipe. She blew away the field then. Most in this sport where nobody shows all their cards this early in an Olympic season are convinced she has probably gotten better since.
“That’s not my place to say, that’s her story to tell,” said Bea Kim, a friend of Chloe’s who conceded her third-place run would not be good enough to land on the Olympic podium.
The Japanese were not at their best, either.
Yuto Totsuka, who finished second last week in China as part of a Japanese sweep, tried to throw a triple cork on his final run to take first place, but he fell.
That left Yamada with the victory and offered yet another signal of the growing depth of the Japanese team. Yamada finished fifth last week. This week, Olympic champion Ayumu Hirano wasn’t even at Copper Mountain. Ruka Hirano, ranked second early in the season behind Australia’s Scotty James, finished eighth.
“They’re just pushing us, and it’s constantly feeding off that energy,” said Chase Josey, a two-time Olympian for the U.S. who finished 12th. “They’ve been kind of leading the pack, and that motivates us.”
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