LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — One of the more frightening falls over 14 days of snowboarding at the Milan Cortina Olympics involved one of the sport’s newest champions.
Gaon Choi slammed hard on the deck of the halfpipe in her first run — her knees buckling before she skidded limply to the bottom.
“I honestly thought my knee was broken,” Choi, now back home in South Korea, told The Associated Press. “I’ve dreamed of this Olympics since I was 7 years old, so in that moment I thought, ‘Is this really how it ends?’ I started to cry because so many emotions rushed through me at once.”
Instead, it ended with a gold medal. The 17-year-old Choi overcame the injury and the emotions and is now the woman who unseated Chloe Kim as Olympic champion in snowboarding’s premier event.
Choi is also one of her sport’s young athletes to watch over the next four years, as snowboarding closes down shop in Livigno.
Choi said standing on the podium with Kim, a mentor and big sister-like figure who embraced her when she was younger, “brought mixed emotions.”
“A little bit of regret, a little bit of feeling sorry, but also so much happiness,” Choi said. “It made the moment even more special.”
These Olympics are, so far, the highlight of a career that might be traced back to a mistake Choi’s father, Inyoung, made when she was 7.
Wanting his kids to get out on the snow, he bought snowboards for her older brother and sister but skis for Gaon, thinking it might be an easier way to start. She didn’t like that, so he relented and bought her a snowboard, as well.
“I always wanted to do whatever they were doing. I think that’s how it all started,” she said.
Thus began the road to becoming South Korea’s first gold-medal snowboarder. The country loves its sports stars, though much of the focus revolves around golf and, during the Winter Games, speedskating with some curling mixed in. That might explain why Choi’s victory wasn’t televised live back home.
“A little disappointing,” she said. “But it was really surprising and special when the flight attendants recognized me on the plane.”
Though the gold medal speaks about the gritty nature of her Olympic performance, Choi insists there’s more. She said the first-round injury didn’t allow her to show the run “I had truly prepared.”
“I want to train harder, make it perfect, and show the run that I’ve really been wanting to present,” she said.
Her next chance figures to come at a Snow League halfpipe event, either at the end of this month in Aspen, Colorado, if she’s healthy or next month at Laax, Switzerland.
A look at a few more snowboarders who could make headlines four years from now:
Taiga Hasegawa, Japan
The 20-year-old Hasegawa’s silver medal in slopestyle was part of a world-leading nine-medal haul for Japan.
Nine separate riders won those medals. It was yet another sign of the country’s growing dominance over snowboarding — a surge that is happening both in the halfpipe and out. Six of Japan’s medals came in slopestyle and big air.
But it’s not all about big tricks.
In an anecdote that will bring smiles to the faces of people connected to the soul of this sport, Hasegawa said he made a point of venturing outside the snowpark several times during the week to ride powder.
“Snowboarding is riding. No jumps. No rails, and I have been riding a lot,” he said. “If jumping is good and rails are good but riding is not good, doesn’t have style, then I can’t be the best rider. I want to become a good snowboarder and I want riding to look good for many people.”
Cam Melville Ives, New Zealand
The 19-year-old from the burgeoning action-sports power of New Zealand had only one problem in the halfpipe final — not enough halfpipe.
He was one of three riders — including the champion, Yuto Totsuka — to land a pair of triple corks. Melville Ives landed them in all three of his runs but moved down the pipe too rapidly and ran out of room to effectively land his fifth and final trick every time.
“I mean, I landed the whole run in training, just went way bigger in the competition, just ran out of halfpipe,” he said. “It’s a bit annoying running out of halfpipe. I’ll just have to go a little bit smaller next time.”
Bonus: Cam’s twin brother, Finley, competes for New Zealand in ski halfpipe Friday.
Ollie Martin, USA
Two years ago, the 17-year-old American slopestyle-big air rider became the youngest to pull off a 2160-degree jump (six full rotations) and also the first to be able to do that trick spinning both ways. That happened at a training session in Austria and it made people take notice.
His Olympic debut also turned heads.
He finished fourth in big air and ninth in slopestyle, in what was one of the more head-scratching judging decisions in a contest that was full of them.
The judging wasn’t Martin’s takeaway from his time in Italy, however.
“It’s been such a surreal experience being here. So different from any other” competition, he said. “Everyone’s been so nice. It’s just been an awesome experience.”
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