U.S. star snowboarder Chloe Kim returns to the halfpipe Wednesday in Livigno, Italy, aiming to defend her Olympic title and win a third straight gold medal — a feat no other rider, including legend Shaun White, has pulled off in the sport's history.

Things are a little different this time around, though. At 25, Kim finds herself facing new challenges she was mostly immune to at the previous 2018 PyeongChang and 2022 Beijing Games.

For one, she's coming off a very recent injury — something she hasn't had to deal with this close to the Olympics before. In mid-January, Kim announced she tore her left labrum, a type of shoulder joint cartilage, while training in Switzerland. She said she was "good to go" for Milan Cortina, but admitted she was disappointed she wouldn't be able to snowboard until "right before the Olympics."

Kim hasn't officially competed since Dec. 18 at the Copper Mountain World Cup, where after placing 1st in qualifying she took a hard fall in training and withdrew from the final.

That's sharp contrast from her previous leadups to the Games. Before Beijing, Kim won the Dew Tour in December and the Laax Open World Cup in January. Before PyeongChang, she strung together five 1st- or 2nd-place finishes from December through January at Copper, Dew Tour, Snowmass, Mammoth and Winter X Games.

“I’ve been doing this for so long, and every season, I am met with a different set of challenges, so I guess this is going to be the one this year,” Kim said on social media. “But I’m so grateful that I will be good to go for the Olympics.”

Kim reconfirmed Monday at a press conference that she's good to go, saying "the shoulder's feeling good" and that she plans to wear a shoulder brace kept in place with heavy tape. Coincidently, teammate Maddy Schaffrick will be wearing one too — for the same injury, just on the opposite shoulder.

And it's not only the injury. Kim has now missed crucial leadup reps; even if she's been on this big stage before, the spotlight knows who's ready and who's not. On top of that, her unparalleled degree of difficulty and skill has long set her apart — to the point where even a less-than-perfect run could still keep her comfortably ahead.

But the sport has evolved; the field is deeper, the tricks are bigger and there's new talent ready to try to unseat one of the greatest snowboarders of all time from her Olympic throne.

If Kim is ultimately healthy and adequately prepared to land her run and hit the tricks she's capable of, she should be able to hold onto gold. That said, a deep Japanese roster and South Korean phenom Gaon Choi are poised to pounce.

Chloe Kim (USA)

The Torrance, Calif., native is chasing history on two fronts: she'd be the first snowboarder to win three straight Olympic golds, and the first woman to win three Olympic snowboarding golds overall. White reached three golds on the men's side, but not consecutively (2006, 2010 and 2018). Czechia's Ester Ledecka and Austria's Anna Gasser both had chances to reach the milestone these Games before Kim, but came up short — Ledecka went out in the quarterfinals of parallel giant slalom, while Gasser finished 8th in big air.

A goofy-foot rider, Kim is a three-time world champion (2019, 2021, 2025), a 12-time World Cup winner and an eight-time Winter X Games champion — tied with White for the most X Games halfpipe wins of all time.

The U.S. has won at least one medal at every Olympics where women's snowboard halfpipe has been contested, and has won multiple medals at four of the seven Games. Kim remains Team USA's best shot to keep the podium streak alive.

Gaon Choi (KOR)

Seventeen-year-old Gaon Choi might be Kim's biggest threat — and in a lot of ways, she probably wouldn't be in the position without her. Goan burst onto the scene in early 2023 after winning X Games at age 14, breaking Kim's record as the youngest X Games halfpipe champion by roughly six months. Afterward, Kim said, “I feel like a proud Mom. … The future of snowboarding’s in good hands.”

Gaon began snowboarding at age 7, and she's said she cried when her father gave her skis to start out. A couple years later, she met Kim at a 2017 Olympic test event in PyeongChang — a connection that led Kim and her father to helping bring Gaon to the U.S. to train with the Mammoth Mountain development team under Ben Wisner, who coaches Americans Bea Kim and Maddie Mastro. Gaon has said she's inspired by Chloe Kim, and that watching her mentor win gold in 2018 made her "realize how significant the Olympics Games [are]."

With Chloe Kim sidelined, Gaon has owned the circuit this season, winning all three World Cups she entered (Secret Garden, Copper, Laax) on the road to Milan Cortina. 

No South Korean woman has ever won an Olympic snowboarding medal. If Gaon wins gold at 17 years, 101 days old, she'd also break Red Gerard's mark as the youngest snowboarding Games champion (17 years, 227 days).

Sara Shimizu, Mitsuki Ono, Sena Tomita (JPN)

Japan brings a stacked roster with multiple medal contenders, as evidenced by the nation's 2nd-through-5th finish at the 2025 World Championships behind Chloe Kim.

• Sara Shimizu may be a dark horse. Making her Olympic debut, the 2025 world silver medalist turned 16 in November and then won X Games in January. She won the Copper World Cup in 2024 against a field that included Chloe Kim and took silver at the 2024 Youth Winter Games.
• Mitsuki One, the two-time reigning world bronze medalist, finished 9th at the Beijing Olympics. She's won two World Cup halfpipe Crystal Globes, was runner-up at the X Games in 2024 and is the 2020 Youth Winter Olympic champion.
• Sena Tomita claimed bronze at the 2022 Games, Japan's first-ever medal in this event. She won X Games in 2022, finished a respective 4th and 5th at 2021 and 2025 Worlds, and last March in Aspen won the inaugural Snow League halfpipe event.

Maddie Mastro, Bea Kim, Maddy Schaffrick (USA)

Chloe Kim's teammates Maddie Mastro and Bea Kim are both capable of contending for podium spots, even as each has had to navigate injuries of their own.

Mastro is making her third Olympic appearance in Italy, looking for a breakthrough after respective 12th- and 13th-place finishes at the 2018 and 2022 Games. The Wrightwood, Calif., native put together a career-best season last year, notching three of five World Cup podiums and earning her first career win at Secret Garden in December 2024, which ultimately delivered the Crystal Globe in halfpipe.

Things were looking up, but this past offseason, Mastro dislocated her elbow over the summer and tweaked her ankle in November. The 25-year-old made her season debut at Copper in December, finishing 6th, then placed 9th at the Laax Open last month. While the injuries likely hampered the momentum she gained last season, at full strength she should contend for the elusive first career Olympic medal.

Bea Kim — not related to Chloe, but a third U.S. rider from California — jumped from the junior circuit during this Olympic quadrennial since Beijing and quickly established herself as the future of U.S. women's halfpipe behind Chloe Kim and Mastro. The 19-year-old missed nearly the entire 2024-25 season while recovering from a left shoulder dislocation that required surgery in December 2024. A year and change later, she says it hasn't bothered her since.

Schaffrick, once hailed as a teenage sensation, left competitive snowboarding at age 20 for nearly a decade. In that time, she studied as a plumber's apprentice and started coaching youth snowboarding. She eventually climbed the coaching ladder to join the staff at U.S. Ski and Snowboard before deciding to give competition another try in 2024. She now makes her Olympic debut two months shy of 32.

Veterans Queralt Castellet of Spain and Cai Xuton of China are back and ready to shake things up. Castellet won silver in 2022 and has overcome a gruesome 2023 crash to reach a fifth Games at age 36, while Cai, the 2023 world champion, has narrowly missed the podium in each of the past three Olympics.