South Korea’s first Olympic snowboarder, JTBC commentator Kim Ho Jun, congratulated Choi Ga On after she won the country’s first Olympic gold medal in snowboarding.
Kim posted a video on social media on Thursday, writing, “Ga On, congratulations from the bottom of my heart, and thank you.” He added, “Snowboarding is the trend. When I first competed in the Olympics, most people didn’t even know what a halfpipe was,” and said some people even mistook snowboarding for skiing. Kim, a former national team halfpipe rider, competed at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics as the only South Korean athlete in the event.
He wrote that hearing “snowboarding is the trend” feels especially exciting because he rode “in that era” and poured everything into the sport. “Today, the history of South Korean snowboarding has been rewritten,” he said, adding that he had watched for a long time how hard Choi worked to win halfpipe gold.
Kim ended his post by thanking Choi and JTBC, writing, “South Korean snowboarding! May it last forever. The trend is? Snowboarding.”
Choi won gold in the women’s halfpipe final at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics at Livigno Snow Park in Italy, scoring 90.25 on her third run to beat Chloe Kim, who scored 88.00 and was seeking a third straight Olympic gold. It was South Korea’s first gold medal in a snow event.
South Korean snowboarders have won three medals at these Olympics: Kim Sang Gyeom’s silver in men’s parallel giant slalom, Yoo Seung Eun’s bronze in women’s big air and Choi’s gold.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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