Olympic champ Chloe Kim has a new outlook, new tricks -- and the old dominance

CHLOE KIM LOOKS to her right and sees herself at 14. "Would she be proud of me?" Kim asks. "I don't know. She was very judgy. I think she'd be like, 'Why haven't you done more?'"

Kim, 24, is seated on a couch in the lobby of Buttermilk Mountain's bustling Inn at Aspen, where a photo of her winning her first X Games gold medal in 2015 hangs on the wall. This chilly Colorado afternoon, she's still wearing her snowboard boots and snow pants, having just qualified first into finals at the Aspen Grand Prix. Winning here will extend her lead over two-time Olympian Maddie Mastro in Kim's bid to clinch the first spot on the 2026 U.S. Olympic halfpipe team Saturday at the world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Kim is on a winning streak. In January, she secured her eighth X Games Aspen gold medal, tying Shaun White for the most X Games snowboard SuperPipe wins in history. One of the most dominant and progressive halfpipe snowboarders in the world, she'll be the heavy favorite to win at the Milano Cortina Olympics next February and become the first snowboarder to earn gold in three consecutive Winter Games.

And yet, Kim still wrestles with the notion that she hasn't done enough. At least in the eyes of the most critical judge she knows: her past self.

Kim studies the picture, taken moments after that win 10 years ago. She's sporting a bloody lip and a bandage on her left cheek after taking a hard slam in practice earlier that day.

"I was bleeding and so bummed, because my crush was there," Kim says. She thinks about the decade that has passed between that photo and this moment, how she's not that awkward teenager anymore. On second thought, she says, younger Chloe would have some nice things to say about the woman she has become.

"I think she'd be stoked on my fashion," Kim says. "I also think she'd be happy with my riding, which is all that matters to me right now. I feel like I'm finding my feet. I'm more confident than ever. I've found my joy again."

Less than a year ago, Kim had a hard time imagining herself in Italy next winter. After taking two years away from competition and settling into her life in Los Angeles, she returned to the sport in January 2024 with mixed yet promising results. She finished fourth at the Laax Open in Switzerland, took 10th at the Mammoth Grand Prix and won the X Games in Aspen, where she became the first woman to land a 1260 (3½ rotations) in halfpipe competition. But no matter the result, no matter how well she performed, Kim says she felt anxious and empty.

"Every time something good happened, I expected it," Kim says, twisting a lock of her long, dark hair. "Every time something bad happened, I let it get to me. I was constantly angry and in a state of fear and incredibly depressed. It was scary. I went through a really dark time."

She says when her emotions began to negatively affect her relationships with friends and family, she sought help. Last June, she began meeting with a therapist in person and over Zoom in intensive, twice-weekly sessions. She credits athletes such as Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka with inspiring her to seek therapy and feel comfortable talking publicly about her mental health.

"I let this perfectionist side of me consume my life," Kim says. "I learned although it's good to strive for perfection and acknowledge parts of yourself that could be better, it's also important to forgive yourself and learn from it, as opposed to letting it drown out all the positive."

She says the perspective that therapy has given her has changed her relationships for the better, including with her sport. This season, Kim is focused not only on pushing herself to learn skills no woman has landed in a halfpipe, but on performing tricks that bring her joy -- like her crowd-favorite, sky-high switch method. Letting go of her perfectionism has allowed Kim to lean into the kind of riding she wants to do, not just what she thinks is expected of her.

"I'm having fun," Kim says. "I was in a bit of a robotic phase for a while, so it's nice to come out of it."

These days, Kim composes her contest runs much like a gymnast choreographs a floor routine. She throws in the banger skills, like back-to-back 1080s and inverted spins no other competitor is doing, but she also includes floaty backside tricks, a variety of grabs and the switch method to remind fans -- and judges -- that winning runs also include style, amplitude and technicality.

"She's reconnected with her love of snowboarding, which was missing for a little bit," says Rick Bower, snowboard sport director for U.S. Ski and Snowboard. "You can see that when she shows up, she's loving it. Having tricks that she likes in her run, like that switch backside method, matters for her."

"I have a deep personal connection with my tricks," Kim says. "They feel like my children. I'm proud of every one of them."

"I'M VERY PREGNANT," Kim says, looking around the lobby and laughing at what that must sound like to anyone within earshot. "It's triplets."

She's talking, of course, about new halfpipe tricks she's currently learning, some of which, she would be the first woman to land in competition. "There are so many children I've yet to birth," Kim says.

When she talks about the tricks she already has in her arsenal, she can recall with detail the date and scenario when each was born. She's toying with relearning one that she put aside for a couple of years after taking a hard slam. "She's been in timeout," Kim says.

Thirty minutes ago, during qualifying here in Aspen, Kim landed a run that included a backside 900, which she learned three weeks ago and hadn't attempted in practice this week. It's a trick she was scared to attempt for more than a decade.

"We have one big crash and build up walls," says Bower, who has coached Kim since she was 13. "They stay there until we decide to think about it differently or change our attitude toward it. That's what Chloe did."

One day about two weeks before January's Laax Open, Kim says she woke up in Switzerland and simply thought differently about backside spins. "I haven't spun backside since I was 10," she says. "The weather was horrible outside, and I wasn't working on anything else. But it was time. I went up to Rick and asked, 'Can I try a backside five?'"

Bower was stunned. He'd been nudging Kim to give backside spinning another go since before that first X Games win in 2015, and the answer was always no. He didn't know why she changed her mind that morning, and he didn't ask. Kim's new attitude was opening her mind to things she'd previously rejected, and Bower knew to trust her instincts. "I said, 'Let's go,'" Bower says.

They went out to the halfpipe, and within a handful of tries, Kim landed a backside 540. That same day, she learned a backside 720. Within the week, she nailed her first backside 900.

"There are a lot of famous snowboarders who tried backside nines for years and never got it," Bower says. "Her ability to know she can do something not just on an intellectual level, but feel it internally, visualize it with feeling, it's unbelievable."

Kim says when she's learning a new trick, her longtime partnership with Bower is just as important as her ability to break down the mechanics of the movement. Some days, their practice sessions are just about having fun. On others, they work on tricks Kim might never throw in a competition run.

"You have to find a coach who matches you and your style," Kim says. "Maybe it's the Korean in me, but I appreciate harsh truths and honesty. If it's not good, don't tell me it was good. I want you to tell me it was absolute dog s--- and I want you to tell me how to fix it. That's how I've gotten to this point. I have somebody who is brutally honest with me and someone whose opinion I can trust."

For example, last year, Bower saw Kim dipping her shoulder on a cab (switch frontside) 1080 and told her he believed she could evolve the trick to its inverted double cork version (two flips and one rotation as opposed to three rotations without flipping). But at the time, she wasn't interested in working on double corks.

She'd landed a frontside double cork 1080 a couple years earlier and even tried one in a contest but took a hard fall. "She's also been in timeout ever since," Kim says. "Trying a cab double cork 1080 sounded way harder, because it's switch. I didn't know if I was ready."

But she trusted Bower and agreed to try. "He's my doula," Kim says. "My trick doula."

Kim needed just four tries to land the cab double cork 1080 in the halfpipe. "I didn't use an airbag," she says. She landed it for the first time in competition at the Laax Open, the first woman ever to do so, and her winning run at X Games Aspen included the frontside version of the trick, which is no longer in timeout.

Kim says she plans to add a trio of new tricks -- the so-called triplets -- to her repertoire over the next year, including at least one new double cork spin. "Once you have that acceptance with yourself, you're able to let go of all the things that have held you back," she says. "Learning to spin backside has opened up a whole new world."

Her new outlook has enabled her to put aside her fears and ego and enjoy creating contest runs that will keep her at the top of the sport.

"Sometimes you have to take time away and come back to really fall in love with it again," says U.S. Snowboard head coach Danny Kass, the 2002 Olympic halfpipe silver medalist. "Now that a lot of the field is catching up, there's a big drive in her to be not just the best but be better than she ever was."

On Thursday in St. Moritz, Kim qualified first into Saturday's final. If she wins, she will earn her third world title and clinch the first spot on the 2026 U.S. Olympic halfpipe team. (The remainder of the four-woman Olympic halfpipe team will be named next January.)

Kim says despite the pressure, she's approaching world championships the same way she has every contest this year, the same way she's thinking about her third Olympics next February. She has let go of what she believes is expected of her, and that allows her to assess her performances on more than what the judges -- or young Chloe -- might think. "The goal is to do a run that I'm proud of," she says. "That seems more achievable right now."

With her younger self looking on from the photo on the wall, Kim smiles, stands and grabs her stomach with both hands. "It's time to eat," she says, and looks toward her parents, Jong and Boran, who have been sitting patiently nearby. "Let's go to lunch," she says. "I'm starving."

After all, she's eating for four.