Chloe Kim - The Innocent

SNOWBOARDING - HALF PIPE - OLYMPICS - TEAM USA

ARCHETYPE: THE INNOCENT

Day 56/135

Athletic Accomplishments

Chloe Kim is only 21 years old, and she’s already an Olympic gold medalist, a six-time X Games gold medalist, and landed on Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2018. Pretty boss.

Kim started snowboarding at age 4 and competing at age 6. By the time she was 13, she joined the U.S. Snowboarding Team. Since then, she’s been dominant, fearless, and stacking up wins. To wit, she is the only athlete in all of X Games history to win three gold medals before turning 16.

In 2015, she won her fist gold medal in superpipe at the X Games. In 2016, she did the same damn thing, the first person to win back-to-back gold at an X Games. In 2016, she landed back-to-back 1080 spins—BRUH, THAT IS 3 FULL ROTATIONS.

In 2018, Kim won three ESPYs for Best Female Athlete, Best Female Olympian, and Best Female Action Sports Athlete. But that’s nothing compared to winning a gold medal in Women’s Halfpipe, where she scored a nearly perfect 98.25, which put her almost 10 points ahead of the silver medal winner. Yikes.

Character Archetype: The Innocent

In 2018, Chloe Kim became the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding gold medal for her performance in halfpipe. For Kim, a Korean-American, it was special to do this in PyongChang, in front of a Korean audience. She said,

“I have this different opportunity because I'm Korean-American, but I'm riding for the States. ... I'm starting to understand that I can represent both countries.”

If only it could be that pure. Snowboarding is a white sport, and Kim is the only non-white person on the halfpipe team. This year, she shared that she regularly receives 30+ anti-Asian racist messages per day, resulting in immense stress and her decision to leave social media for a while.

Once again, Kim's performance is fearless and brave, but not just in snowboarding. By speaking out on behalf of the AAPI community, she's impacting the public discourse.