ZHANGJIAKOU, China — “My butt hurts!”
It’s a line that probably won’t make Olympic history, but it’s a line that perfectly defines Chloe Kim, who delivered it with a relieved grin not long after claiming a second straight gold in halfpipe.
There are writers, and then there is Shakespeare. There are composers, and then there is Mozart. There are snowboarders, and then there is Chloe Kim. Some geniuses reign so far above the world around them that everyone else is simply fighting for the silver medal.
But as brilliant as Shakespeare and Mozart were, they never pulled off two 1080s — tricks with three complete rotations, or 1,080 degrees — off the edges of a glistening, icy 22-foot-high halfpipe in the mountains above Beijing.