Chloe Kim Wiki: 5 Facts To Know About The 2018 Olympics Gold Medalist Snowboarder

Chloe Kim was born on April 23, 2000, in Long Beach, California. As of 2018, she is 17-years-old and 5ft 2in. She currently rides for Mammoth Mountain Snowboard Team. At a young age, her family moved to Torrance, which is where she was ultimately raised. She began snowboarding at the age of 4, when her father, originally from South Korea, started her in the sport. They were on vacation at Mountain High, a popular ski resort located 85 miles northeast of Torrance. Her father wanted her to try the sport that he enjoyed. She entered her first competition at the age of 6 for Team Mountain High. She soon began winning local contests at the age of 9. Then, at the ages of 8-10, she was sent to train in Valais, Switzerland with her aunt. She would often wake up at 4am to make it to the local mountain resort in time for it to open. After she returned, she began training at Mammoth Mountain, another popular ski resort in California, located about 300 miles northeast of Torrance. She has since been associated with the Mammoth Mountain Snowboard Team. She began competing under US Snowboarding in 2013. For a long time, Chloe Kim didn't fully enjoy snowboarding. It was not until she began getting better and was able to start performing difficult jumps and tricks, that she then fell in love with it. For these reasons, she credits her father as her largest influence in the sport. In fact, since her decision to become more serious in snowboarding at the age of 12, and all of the time required for her travel and training since then, her father has quit his job as an engineer to travel with Chloe full time. Her parents came to the United States from South Korea in 1982. For this reason, Chloe Kim was excited to have her extended family cheering her on at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang. The snowboarder still lives in Southern California, in La Palma, and in her free time, she enjoys playing guitar, skateboarding, and surfing. She also loves dogs, including her Australian Shepherd Reese. She speaks English, French and Korean. She is currently sponsored by Burton, Oakley, Korean skincare brand Laneige, and Target. She is also known for her constantly changing hair color, which she says looks fun, even though she had to convince her parents to allow her. After finishing her snowboarding career, Chloe Kim wants to attend college to become a veterinarian.

Chloe Kim's net worth of accolades is already an impressive list for a 17-year-old snowboarder, and she has not only won awards as the youngest snowboard winner but in some cases, she has made history as the only female winner. For example, in 2014, she became the youngest snowboard winner of the World Snowboard Tour. In 2016, she was the first female snowboarder to land back-to-back 1080s during the US Grand Prix in Park City, UT. During the same run, she also became the first female snowboarder to receive a perfect score of 100. Another 2016 achievement was becoming the first US snowboard female to win a gold medal at the Youth Olympic Winter Games. In addition, she has been named as one of TIME Magazine's 30 Most Influential Teens in 2016. She was also named Snowboarding Athlete of the Year at the 2016 Ski and Snowboard Association Awards.

While Chloe Kim was too young to compete at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, being as she was 13-years-old, she was able to compete in the 2014 Winter X Games. This was her first X Games event, taking place in Aspen. She finished second in the SuperPipe, behind Kelly Clark. This was her first earned medal as a competitive snowboarder and took place only one year after she began competing under US Snowboarding. This would set the wheels in motion for the next four years, and likely much more to come. The next season of Winter X Games, this time in Aspen as well, Chloe Kim was 15 and looking to prove herself. This time, she did beat Kelly Clark in the SuperPipe and earned the gold medal. This made Kim the youngest snowboard winner to earn gold at the Winter X Games, at the age of 14. She held this title until 2016 when Kelly Sildaru won at the age of 13. Kelly Sildaru, an Estonian freestyle skier, won the medal at the 2016 Winter X Games in Aspen in the slopestyle event. During the 2016 Winter X Games, Chloe Kim made yet another record. She became the first person under the age of 16 to win back-to-back two gold medals at a Winter X Games. This is a record she still holds today. She kept the 2016 season going strong; as she then went on to land back-to-back 1080s in a snowboarding competition, at the US Snowboarding Grand Prix. This run earned her a perfect score of 100, a title which no other female snowboarder hold, and is only the second snowboarder to ever accomplish this. The first recipient of a perfect 100 score was Shaun White, which he earned in both 2012 and 2018. She then went on to win the gold medal in SuperPipe at the 2016 Oslo Winter X Games, the bronze medal in the 2017 Aspen Winter X Games, also in SuperPipe, and then finally gold again at the 2018 Aspen Winter X Games, in SuperPipe. Her snowboarding hero, Kelly Clark has described Chloe as being one of the hardest working athletes in the sport of snowboarding, and is often the last one out there and doing the most run of any other athlete. She continues to mention the love of the sport and seeing it so strongly in Chloe Kim, a welcome sign amongst the high degree of competition and intensity that can come with professional action sports. According to Kelly Clark, Chloe Kim is the full package.

Chloe Kim was 13-years-old when the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia occurred, and even though she actually qualified for the event, she was not allowed to compete due to the 15-year-old age mimimum. It was not until 2016 when she competed in her first Olympics, the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics in Lillehammer. At the games, she won the gold medal in both the Halfpipe and Slopestyle events. In addition, she managed multiple firsts in the Youth Games, a feat which would become normal for Chloe. She became the first snowboarder chosen as the flag bearer for Team USA for the Opening Ceremony. She also became the first US women to win gold in snowboarding, as well as earning the highest score in snowboarded in Youth Olympic Games history. For all of this, she was nominated for Best Breakthrough Athlete at the 2016 ESPYS. Two years later, she qualified and competed in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. In the time leading up to the event, she trained in Park City, Utah, in a state-of-the-art facility, which was also a high-tech skate park. The facility included trampolines, foam landing pits, a skateboarding bowl, and tightropes. She won the gold medal in the Women's Halfpipe and made headline news for her dominating performance and young age. Her final score was 98.25 out of 100, an impressive feat because the silver medalist scored an 89.75.

Chloe Kim is all over social media and has millions of followers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more. On Instagram alone, she has 755k followers with 469 photos. Her Twitter followers’ number grew in about 24 hours during the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, from 20,000 on Monday morning of her gold medal run, to 175,000 on Tuesday morning the next day. All of her most popular tweets center on food, going viral for her desires for ice cream in South Korea, and her nerve-reducing churro eating. In fact, it has caused many food companies to notice, even sending her free food. Some of the food companies offering her free food included Hamilton Beach, Roy Rogers Restaurant, Oreo, California Pizza Kitchen, Vermont Smoke & Cure, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Red Apron Butcher and over a dozen more. A lot of these brands were jumping on food-related tweets from the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, because of their wide exposure. For example, when Chloe Kim tweeted the below ice cream tweet, about a dozen ice cream brands reached out offering free ice cream. The tweet earned 35k likes, 500 comments, and 4.7k retweets. In case you were wondering, her favorite ice cream flavor is cookies and cream. Her many food-related tweets have also led to a lifetime supply of Skittles, as shown in the Instagram photo below.

While the 17-year-old youngest snowboard winner on multiple occasions enjoys her training sessions on the mountain, she also considers herself a city girl. This is understandable of a teenage girl who grew up in Los Angeles. She enjoys going to mall and shopping, one of her favorite stores being Zara. While her fellow snowboarders are wearing Vans and action sports-branded apparel, Chloe Kim prefers designer bags and trendy fashion and considers herself more of a girly-girl. She also loves In & Out, a California fast-food chain and staple to most California teenagers. Her relatable tweets about being hangry and eating churros, along with her Instagram photos of giant bags of California Pizza Kitchen and donuts, makes her appear a normal, 17-year-old girl with a somewhat normal life, aside for the occasional gold medal run and celebrity friends. The above photo shows Chloe hanging out in Brooklyn, New York, during some off-time from training.