{"id":792878,"date":"2019-02-08T19:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/american-chloe-kim-aussie-scotty-james-win-halfpipe-at-park-city-world-championships\/"},"modified":"2019-02-19T10:52:45","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T17:52:45","slug":"american-chloe-kim-aussie-scotty-james-win-halfpipe-at-park-city-world-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/american-chloe-kim-aussie-scotty-james-win-halfpipe-at-park-city-world-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"American Chloe Kim, Aussie Scotty James win halfpipe at Park City World Championships"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gold medalist Chloe Kim, of the United States, celebrates after winning the women’s snowboard halfpipe final at the freestyle ski and snowboard world championships on Friday in Park City, Utah.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That already sizable gap between Chloe Kim and the rest of the world is growing even bigger.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old Kim added a world championship to her overflowing collection of halfpipe titles, outdistancing second-place finisher Xuetong Cai of China by 9.5 points on a frigid afternoon in Park City, Utah.<\/p>\n

With Friday\u2019s win, Kim is now the reigning Olympic, X Games, U.S. Open, Dew Tour and world champion.<\/p>\n

Just as daunting to the other nine riders \u2014 and dozens more looking on from elsewhere \u2014 was the trick Kim tried but didn\u2019t land after her victory was already wrapped up.<\/p>\n

It was a frontside, double-cork 1080. Four months ago in a training session in Switzerland , Kim became one of the rare women to land a double-flipping jump, and the first to land it with a frontside takeoff. She tried to bring it out for the world to see Friday, but couldn\u2019t stay upright. A snowy week had limited her time in the halfpipe leading into the contest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I\u2019d put it down, but at the next contest, hopefully, I\u2019ll be able to do it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just so hard when you don\u2019t get that much practice. But I\u2019m stoked I tried it, and I\u2019m glad I\u2019m walking away in one piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

The year after the Olympics is generally a down year for these athletes \u2014 men\u2019s gold and silver medalists Shaun White and Ayumu Hirano didn\u2019t compete here. It\u2019s a year geared toward healing, having fun and recharging the batteries.<\/p>\n

Though Kim recently decided to enroll at Princeton next fall , she\u2019s showing no signs of taking a break quite yet.<\/p>\n

The same might be said of Scotty James, the Aussie who finished third in last year\u2019s Olympics but first in the hearts of many purists, who appreciate his devotion to the technical aspects of a sport that has become almost singularly obsessed with height and flips during the past decade.<\/p>\n

James can go big, too, but he stands out with tricks such as the switch backside 1080 he used to open his final run. It\u2019s a jump performed traveling backward, then flipping backward \u2014 akin to a right-handed baseball player swinging left handed while suspended upside down.<\/p>\n

He landed that one perfectly, then put together a series of double-corks, and landed all of them without a hitch.<\/p>\n

In all, it wasn\u2019t even as difficult as his bronze-medal run last year, but this time it was more than enough. When his winning score of 97.5 came up, James thrust his trademark red boxing gloves into the air and celebrated his third straight title at the world championships. He also won in 2015 and 2017.<\/p>\n

Yuto Totsuka of Japan finished second, followed by Patrick Burgener of Switzerland. Iouri Podladtchikov, the 2014 Olympic champion, took a fall during warmups and did not compete. In the women\u2019s competition, Kim and Cai were joined on the podium by young Californian Maddie Mastro (82.00) while teamboat Springs native and Breckenridge resident Arielle Gold finished in fifth place (79.00)<\/p>\n

So, while James knows he\u2019s got plenty of competition out there \u2014 including White and Hirano, and even 17-year-old Toby Miller, the protege of White\u2019s and the top finishing male American who finished out of the medals by only 1.25 points on Friday \u2014 Kim\u2019s main competition will be herself.<\/p>\n

College may pull her away from the halfpipe briefly, but at 18, she\u2019s not even close to her prime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is rad, to think my first legitimate world championship came here. I love it in Park City,\u201d Kim said. \u201cI\u2019m super-stoked to take it home.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gold medalist Chloe Kim, of the United States, celebrates after winning the women’s snowboard halfpipe final at the freestyle ski and snowboard world championships on Friday in Park City, Utah. That already sizable gap between Chloe Kim and the rest of the world is growing even bigger. The 18-year-old Kim added a world championship to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-792878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 17:21:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}