Winter Olympics women’s halfpipe snowboarding: Chloe Kim goes for gold – live!

Queralt Castellet has a big run with back-to-back 900s, but she can’t land the 1080. No improvement on her 67.75, currently seventh. (Cai moved up to fifth.)

Cai Xuetong (China) has two world championships and two X Games medals. Big amplitude. Cab 720. Frontside 540. Backside 540. Frontside 900.

She’s up to 76.50

Tomito opens with a 900 but loses some speed. She gets back to land a couple of 540s, but the atmosphere just seems down after Arthur’s accident, and she’s not doing much now. Her score isn’t bad at 60.50, but her first run of 65.25 holds up. Seventh place for now — two riders could pass her.

Still, they’re tending to Arthur. She seemed to be holding her wrist to her chest. Not that it matters, but she got a 25.00.

vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.

The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.

Seven riders to go. Kim, Liu, Gold still your podium for now.

Australia’s Emily Arthur is back for her last shot at this. Her first run was a so-so 48.25. She slipped on her second. Starts with a 900 and lands not so cleanly. Just doesn’t get a lot of air on her remaining jumps and tries to do too much toward the end, falling on her head. She’s fortunately not hurt badly and manages to get back up to the end of the pipe.

Sophie Rodriguez falls after a couple of tricks. So ends her fourth Olympic competition.

Mirabelle Thovex lands a perfectly reasonable but not spectacular run. She improves to 63.00.

Nine riders to go. Current podium is Kim (93.75), Liu (89.75), Gold (85.75). Gold has taken her final run. Liu and Kim go last.

Who is Arielle Gold? Someone who’s been waiting for this for a while. She was due to compete in Sochi but was injured on a training run.

Kelly Clark with a big 1080 into a 720. Big air. Pity the judges who have to separate this from Gold’s run.

83.50! Better than her second run but JUST short of Gold’s 85.75.

FINAL RUN STARTS with Arielle Gold, currently in fourth. The tension is palpable. Gets a frontside 1080. Crippler and a 900 late in the run. This is good. Is it enough to beat the legend Kelly Clark? She’s needs 76.25 …

She gets it! 85.75.

Now Clark gets her shot at a fourth Olympic medal.

From Thomas Wahl: “It seems like NBC isn’t showing all the competitors, but how do they do that when it’s “live.” And does the announcing seem even more jingoistic than usual? All the non-US snowboarders on the second run fell. There must be others to show.”

Hey, that’s why you also need the app or the live streams or some other source of info.

1. Chloe Kim (USA) 93.75
2. Liu Jiayu (China) 89.75
3. Kelly Clark (USA) 81.75
4. Arielle Gold (USA) 74.75

So Chloe Kim knows she will have the lead going into the final run. Will she go all-out here for back-to-back 1080s?

Frontside 1080. She goes for the second but doesn’t quite land it. She still manages a couple of tricks down the pipe, playing to the crowd, but her first-run 93.75 is still ahead.

I don’t understand how that’s only a 41.50 unless they’re deducting about 30 points for a fall, but I haven’t read the manual all the way through.

Liu Jiayu (China) lands a perfectly good run, pretty much the same as the first. Not really sure why. She might add a couple of points to her first-run score and solidify her grasp on second place, but that won’t challenge Chloe Kim.

And it’s 89.75. So that will indeed be difficult to top for silver.

REMINDER: We’re in the second of three runs. Only the top run for each rider counts. Three riders left in this run, including our top two — Chloe Kim and Liu Jiayu.

But first, it’s Haruna Matsumoto Good 900, frontside 1080 (first-ever for her, announcer says). And she holds it well! She continues with the run … then slips after a 720!

If she had stayed upright, that surely would’ve troubled Kelly Clark on the podium bubble. But it’s a 46.25, lower than her first-run 70.00.

So our top two will remain the top two after the second run. Can Liu challenge Kim?

Maddie Mastro (USA) is currently in last place. She goes for the 1080 right away and has the big air for it, but the landing is a little heavy. She doesn’t have much interest in going for a score in the 40s or 50s, so she just coasts down and gets a 7.50.

Queralt Castellet (Spain) has beaten Chloe Kim this year, our announcers remind us. She gets a couple of nice jumps in and lands a 1080 … well, sort of. It’s underrotated, and she loses the momentum she would need to do anything else of note. Her score is 67.75, a bit higher than her first run but only good for sixth right now.

Cai Xuetong (China) is up for her second run. She does a 720 that looks so effortless is hard to imagine she actually did both spins. But as with Tomita, it goes wrong near the end (attempting a 900), and she hits her arms on the pipe floor. That’s a 41.25, an improvement over her first run.

Sena Tomita (Japan) had a decent 65.25 on the first run. Lands a good 900 with a “melon grab.” Wasn’t that in Back to School? It’s going really well, until it suddenly doesn’t, and she slides onto her back. Ignore this score. But keep an eye on her in the third. She’s not out of this.

The Slovenian judge gave Arthur a 4. Harsh.

Apologies to Australia. Kelly Arthur just did a bit of a face plant. Not hurt, but her score — all academic here — is 9.25.

I’m sure everyone wants to know what Leslie Jones of Saturday Night Live is thinking. She’s pumped. And apparently indoors?

Rodriguez (France) also botches the landing on a 900 on her way to a 14.75. Her first-run score of 50.50 leaves her in ninth.

Thovex (France) drops in again. She starts with a frontside 900, but her landing is shaky, and she isn’t able to get out of the pipe on the other side. She immediately realizes she can’t challenge for the podium after that wobble, so she takes it easy the rest of the way down. Score is 30.25, so her first-run score of 59.50 is still the one that counts.

Speaking of Kelly Clark … she has one good run in the bank already. Huge air to start her second run. Then a 540, then a 1080 then a cab 720, then a crippler. Who says this sport is just for teens and 20-somethings?

That may top her 76.25 from the first run. Enough to catch Liu at 85.50 for second?

Not quite. 81.75. The bar to reach the podium has been well and truly raised.

RUN 2 STARTS with Arielle Gold. She lands a 1080! Loses a little bit of momentum (figure skating judges would call it an underrotation), but she manages to recover for a 900 a little later in the run.

Forget that first run. Gold just landed a possible medal contender.

Score is … 74.75. JUST short of Kelly Clark’s 76.25. Up to fourth place.

Now they’ll start trying to do better than this …

1. Kim (USA) 93.75
2. Liu (China) 85.50
3. Clark (USA) 76.25
4. Matusmoto (Japan) 70.00
5. Tomita (Japan) 65.25
6. Castellet (Spain) 59.75

And six scores that won’t really matter. We know the bar now. A medal will require a 76.25. A gold will require a 93.75.

CHLOE KIM wraps a scarf around her face, adjusts her gloves, eyes the pipe, and here she goes …

Big air. Frontside 1080. Cab 720. Front 900 with tail grab. McTwist. Corked out 720 (taking the announcer’s word for it … she went upside-down.

Surely that’s good for first place.

Liu Jiayu (China) is getting better amplitude than most. A couple of 720s, switching side to side. Probably our new leader, definitely top three.

Score: 85.50! Well out in front — possibly a medal-winning run already.

Guess who’s next?

REMINDER: This is the first of three runs. Each rider will count only her top score. So there’s no reason to fret about whether a run is a 50 or a 10. They won’t be averaged.

Haruna Matsumoto (Japan) unleashes a nice solid run. Good grabs, solid turns. It’s good for 70.00, up into second place.

Maddie Mastro is sort of the overlooked American here. She’s only 17 but was on the podium at the X Games and in several recent World Cups. She lands a 1080 … almost. She can’t quite keep her momentum. She gamely finishes the rest of the run. Won’t be in the top three, but that 1080 attempt was a nice signal of her ambitions.

Score is 14.00. Two Americans in the bottom two places so far with three riders remaining in the first run.

Queralt Castellet (Spain) is in her fourth Olympics. Can she land a 1080? She starts with a couple of high jumps, lands a 900 and then seems to go conservative the rest of the way. Second place? Nope — third, at 59.75.

Cai Xuetong (China) has two world championships (2015, 2017) to her name, but this run doesn’t look quite right from the start, and she botches a landing two-thirds of the way down, losing all her momentum. A mere 20.50 for that one.

Sena Tomita (Japan) is just 18. She finished seventh in the recent X Games and comes out strong with a 900. Seemed to spin more than the last couple of riders but without as much variety. But she moves into second with a 65.25.

It’s Emily Arthur time. She carried the flag for Australia in the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics and won a silver medal there. Looks like she missed one grab but had a good variety of spins.

Her score: 48.25. Clean, but just not quite as much in that run as the others.

Sophie Rodriguez is our second straight French rider. She’s in her fourth Olympics, with a career-best fifth in 2010. She’s throwing around a lot of 720s with a nice variety of grabs. She gets a 50.50, ranking third so far.

France’s Mirabelle Thovex … starts with a backside 720. She’s not getting much height on her last few jumps. It’s a 59.50.

Kelly Clark already has three Olympic medals. Here she goes again …

Height looks good on her first two tricks, with a frontside 1080. She switches stances, lands a crippler (ouch) and has a clean run.

It’s a respectable 76.25.

(For the record, Gold got a 10.50 score. Safe to say that won’t medal.)

Arielle Gold is up. And here she goes …

And she skids on the pipe on her first landing. An inauspicious start. Good thing they get three runs.

It’s gonna be a bright (bright) briiight sunshiney day. Flags are blowing gently in the breeze.

The pipe is 260 meters long and 21 meters wide, with seven-meter walls.

Four minutes to go.

Or something like that. The international feed just kicked in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re about to start.

It’s currently 11:43 a.m. in Sydney, which means competition will be starting at noon. Emily Arthur rides fifth in the first run.

How’s the weather? Important question. Yesterday, the Alpine skiing was postponed, but the snowboarding slopestyle competition went ahead. Jamie Anderson won, but many athletes were not happy about incurring the risk of being blown around in the air.

Today, it appears we will have Alpine skiing.

So it’s probably safe to say the halfpipe competition will go on as scheduled.

It’s a rather slow start to the day in South Korea. The mixed doubles curling bronze-medal game is underway. You wouldn’t have guessed from the club-curling misses in their opener against the USA, but the Olympic Athletes from Russia are in this game and lead 3-0 against Norway.

The men’s Alpine combined begins at 9:30 p.m. ET, weather permitting. Until then, it’s halfpipe and curling. You’ll need to stay up late or get up early to see a lot today.

From the judging handbook, a typo and an admonition …

The order of competition for the first run is the inverse order in which they qualified.

To be more specific:

1. Gold (USA)
2. Clark (USA)
3. Thovex (France)
4. Rodriguez (France)
5. Arthur (Australia)
6. Tomita (Japan)
7. Cai (China)
8. Castellet (Spain)
9. Mastro (USA)
10. Matsumoto (Japan)
11. Liu (China)
12. Kim (USA)

Beau will be here shortly, in the meantime here’s Amanda Doyle’s profile of Chloe Kim:

The snowboarder Chloe Kim is making her Olympic debut in Pyeongchang, and, despite being just 17 years old, it is long overdue. The halfpipe phenom mathematically qualified for the Sochi Games four years ago but wasn’t old enough to compete, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, according to Kim.

“I’m actually kind of thankful that I wasn’t able to go, just knowing what I’m going through now, going into my first Olympics” she told the Guardian last month. “It’s pretty hectic, and I don’t know if my 13-year-old self would have been able to handle it.”

Now the Los Angeles-area native, who enters these Games as the gold medal favorite, is more than prepared for this moment. Despite not making it to Sochi, Kim still had a breakout season in 2014, when she became the youngest Winter X Games medalist ever. A year later, she topped the podium, winning her first of four X Games titles.

Click below for the full story: