Olympic gold in Italy marks the realisation of Choi’s potential, a name that has been on the lips of many in the snowboard world for some time but is now catapulted into global consciousness.<\/p>\n
In 2023, aged just 14, Choi won X Games superpipe gold, breaking Kim’s record as the youngest rider to win the title.<\/p>\n
That same year, she won the first World Cup she entered but was later ruled out of the remainder of that season after fracturing her back.<\/p>\n
This Olympic season, however, she underlined her ability by winning every World Cup she entered coming into the Games.<\/p>\n
She had managed only sixth in qualification on Wednesday as Kim topped the pile with a score of 90.25 – the exact score Choi would win gold with little more than 24 hours later.<\/p>\n
But her final looked to be over on her very first run when she hit the icy lip of the pipe and flipped into its centre, lying motionless for some time.<\/p>\n
As heavy snow fell, she eventually brushed herself down and later stunned the onlooking crowd with her spellbinding third run, her coach bursting into tears at the realisation of what Choi had achieved.<\/p>\n
“It’s the kind of story you only see in dreams, so I’m incredibly happy,” said Choi.<\/p>\n
“During the final, mentally it was so tough. But right now I am the happiest.<\/p>\n
“My knees are a bit bad, but I feel like I’m overcoming it all with happiness.”<\/p>\n
She later said: “After the first run, I actually cried really hard, thinking maybe I should just quit the Olympics here.<\/p>\n
“I cried because I thought I wouldn’t be able to compete. But the thought kept coming back to me: ‘You can do this. You have to go on’. That’s what pushed me forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olympic gold in Italy marks the realisation of Choi’s potential, a name that has been on the lips…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-423091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}