Chloe Kim, a US snowboarding star, dislocated her shoulder while training in Laax, Switzerland, just a month before the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. In a video she posted on Instagram, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in women’s halfpipe shows how she fell awkwardly while climbing the halfpipe wall. She called it “the silliest fall” on her second day of training for an important World Cup event.
Kim is still hopeful, even though things didn’t go as planned. She says her shoulder doesn’t hurt much and she has a good range of motion, but she is worried about it dislocating again. An MRI on Friday, January 9, will show how bad the injury is and when she will be able to come back. She was already qualified for the US Olympic team based on her past results, and she was sure that her snowboarding form would be good once she was cleared.
The women’s halfpipe event at the Milan Cortina Games starts on February 11. This puts Kim’s chance of winning her third gold medal in a row at risk. This would be the first time in history that a woman has won three gold medals in this event. The PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022 champion, who is 25 years old, wanted to defend her title in Italy starting on February 6. This comes after she had a small, undisclosed injury that kept her from racing in the US Grand Prix in December.
