42 TIME January 31/February 7, 2022
“I hated life,” Kim, now 21, recalls over
plates of pad thai in the airy four- bedroom
home in the west side of Los Angeles she shares
with her boyfriend, skateboarder Evan Berle.
It’s early December, and a 10-ft. Christmas tree
with an ornament featuring the paw print of
her beloved mini Australian shepherd, Reese,
looms over the living room. Upstairs, a mish-
mash of snowboarding awards are piled into a
box, since Kim and Berle haven’t built enough
shelving to display all the hardware. But it
wouldn’t be surprising if many of them stay
there. Kim has a confl icted relationship with
the plaudits she has racked up on her path from
child halfpipe prodigy to the world’s top female
snowboarder. And none weighed heavier on
her than the gold medal from the Olympics in
PyeongChang.
It didn’t stay in the garbage for long. But
fame came fast and hard for Kim, whose gravity-
defying twists and fl ips made her the youngest
female Olympic gold medalist in snowboard-
ing history. She was an unguarded 17-year-old,
quick with a smile and a joke (her tweets about
eating churros and feeling “hangry” during
the competition were the stuff of a viral mar-
keter’s dream). Suddenly, she was making the
rounds of late-night shows, got a Barbie doll
designed in her likeness and was shouted out
by Frances McDormand at the Oscars. In South
Korea, where Kim’s parents were
born and her extended family
still lives, she was celebrated as
a hero. The Seoul Broadcasting
System created a short documen-
tary on her.
Beneath the adulation, Kim
was still a teenager living with
her parents, struggling with the
constraints of sudden celebrity
and the post- Olympic depres-
sion common to elite athletes
who spend their lives training
for a moment that comes only
once every four years. She re-
members it hit her shortly after
PyeongChang, when she went to
a Corner Bakery near her fam-
ily home in Southern California.
Kim was wearing mismatched
pajamas and unmade hair—she
was just out to grab a sandwich.
But when she walked in, everyone turned around to stare.
She panicked, ran out of the store and drove away. “The
minute I come home, I can’t even go to my goddamn favor-
ite place,” Kim says, remembering what it felt like. “It makes
you angry. I just wanted a day where I was left alone. And
it’s impossible. And I appreciate that everyone loves and
supports me, but I just wish people could understand what
I was going through up to that point. Everyone was like, ‘I
just met her, and she’s such a bitch.’ I’m not a bitch. I just
had the most exhausting two months of my life, and the
minute I get home I’m getting hassled. I just want to get my
f-cking ham and cheese sandwich and go.”
Bubbly is Kim’s “big brand,” she says, her fi ngers making
air quotes as she speaks the words. And it has helped make her
extraordinarily successful off the mountain: her annual en-
dorsement income is in the mid-seven fi gures, according to an
industry source. Kim is, indeed, warm in conversation, genu-
inely friendly and easy to laugh. But four years of growing up
in the spotlight have both hardened her exterior and made her
willing to reveal what’s going on behind the perma-smile. Kim
now speaks openly about the racism she experienced com-
peting in a mostly white sport, and how hate crimes against
Asian Americans have left her feeling vulnerable and scared.
She embraced therapy after the pandemic made her recognize
the need to tend to her mental health. And she took time off
from snowboarding to attend college, hoping to experience
life like a normal teenager.
“I don’t care anymore,” Kim says, wrapping up lunch.
“I guess I would tell my younger self that even though things
get hard and people are mean to you or whatever, it’ll getAfter Chloe Kim returnedAfter Chloe Kim returned
home from the 2018home from the 2018
Olympics in South Korea,Olympics in South Korea,
she put her gold medal inshe put her gold medal in
what felt at the time likewhat felt at the time like
the right place: a trashthe right place: a trash
bin at her parents’ house.bin at her parents’ house.
BEIJING
2022LOÏC VENANCE—AFP/GETTY IMAGESKIM WAVES THE U.S.
FLAG AFTER WINNING
OLYMPIC GOLD
IN PYEONGCHANG