South Korean teen snowboard sensation Choi Gaon has captured her first career World Cup title.
Choi won the women’s halfpipe gold medal at the latest International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) Snowboard World Cup in Copper Mountain, Colorado, on Saturday (local time). With a score of 92.75 points, Choi held off Mitsuki Ono of Japan by 2.75 points.
Choi, 15, is the first South Korean snowboarder in two years to win a World Cup title.
This was Choi’s first senior World Cup event. In March 2022, Choi won the halfpipe gold at the FIS Junior World Championships, and then in January this year, she became the youngest superpipe champion in X Games history at 14 years and three months.
“I am happy to have won my first World Cup event,” Choi said in a statement released by her agency, All That Sports. “I wanted to be even better in the second run than in the first run, and that mindset helped me post such a great result.”
Also at Copper Mountain, Lee Chae-un of South Korea grabbed silver in the men’s halfpipe event with 80.00 points, 11 points back of Ayumu Hirano of Japan.
Lee, 17, has now reached the podium in back-to-back World Cups, following his third-place finish in Beijing earlier this month.
Both Choi and Lee are set to compete at the Winter Youth Olympics in the South Korean east coast province of Gangwon in January.
Source: Yonhap News Agency