Home » Santa Clarita News » Santa Clarita Sports » Southern California Winter Olympians Becoming Household Names In PyeongChang
Chloe Kim, 17, celebrates after winning the Gold medal in Halfpipe (Photo taken from cnn.com)

Southern California Winter Olympians Becoming Household Names In PyeongChang

Three Olympians from Southern California have shined brightest on the biggest stage through the first few days of competition in the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games including Chloe Kim (17), the teenage snowboarding phenom who won Gold in Women’s Halfpipe.

Chloe Kim, hailing from Torrance, CA, a mere 21 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, became the youngest female gold medalist on snow with a spectacular performance in Women’s Halfpipe.

So good, that she had the event wrapped up before her final run. And her victory lap was one for the ages, a nearly flawless 98.25 score.

Her first run of the day, scoring a 93.75, was four points better than Silver medalist Liu Jiayu of China, setting a mark that was unreachable before putting on a show in the final run in front of her South Korean relatives, mother and father and sisters. She is the daughter of South Korean immigrants.

Her father emigrated to the U.S. in 1982 with $800 to his name, according to cnn.com.

The win made it three straight gold medals in snowboarding events for the United States after Red Gerard and Jamie Anderson swept the slopestyle events.

Related story: Santa Clarita Sports Report, February 12

Kim wasn’t the only SoCal American to make history in the first week of the Olympic Games. Mirai Nagasu, 24, from Arcadia, became the first woman to land a triple axel (one of the most challenging jumps in all of figure skating) at the Olympics. She is just the third American to land it in any competition.

The jump and her overall performance in the Women’s Free Program, combined with fellow California native Adam Rippon’s (28, Los Angeles) excellent Men’s Free Program routine lifted the United States to the bronze medal.

To call their Bronze triumphant might not even do it justice. Nagasu failed to make the 2014 U.S. team after competing in the 2010 Games.

Rippon made history of his own as the first openly gay U.S. athlete to medal in the Winter Olympics.

USA is currently fifth in the medals standings with six–three golds, two bronze and one silver, as of Tuesday morning.

Carlsbad native and current Los Angeles resident Shaun White goes for third gold medal in Men’s Halfpipe today.

KHTS Sports is your place for Santa Clarita Sports Report and the winter sports season. Find all the latest news and updates on your hometown schools here as they compete in the Foothill League, Heritage League, Western State Conference and GSAC. If you have any news and notes about our teams and players to share please send them to jp@hometownstation.com, like us on facebook.com/khtssports and follow us @KHTSSports on Twitter.

Southern California Winter Olympians Becoming Household Names In PyeongChang

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Justin Powell

Justin moved to the San Fernando Valley from the Inland Empire in 2011 to complete his BA of Communications degree at California State University, Northridge. Just a few months after getting his degree he moved to Valencia and started as an intern at AM-1220 KHTS, and was promoted to Sports Reporter within a year. Though Justin is still relatively new to the Santa Clarita Valley, he is an avid sports fan and passionate about building the sports department at KHTS into a special source for local high school sports.