Before the Milan Winter Olympics, Chloe Kim was the clear favorite for gold in the women’s halfpipe as she was aiming for a third consecutive Olympic title! But just days before the Games, she injured her shoulder. Still against all odds, she returned to the slope and still claimed the silver medal! And now, days later, she has revealed the full severity of what she went through!

Kim suffered a dislocated left shoulder in early January 2026, during training in Switzerland in the World Cup circuit at Laax. It was soon discovered by doctors that she had also torn her labrum. Normally, surgery is required, but as the Olympics were only weeks away, Kim delayed the operation and traveled to Milan with a shoulder brace. But even with the brace, her movement was limited, which made every trick a challenge.

“The labrum injury is frustrating… it wasn’t necessarily painful, but your shoulder just keeps coming out of place… And I didn’t have time to get surgery, which is the only way to repair it,” said  Chloe Kim on CBS Mornings on YouTube channel.

Hearing this, hosts like Nate Burleson were shocked. “That’s an injury that shuts down a lot of football players,” he said. And that reaction captured what everyone was thinking. If NFLplayers struggle to return from this, how was a snowboarder supposed to fly through the air with it?

That question is exactly what Gayle King asked her: “Were you thinking, ‘I probably might not even win a medal here, but I’m going to go for it’? What was your thought process going on?”

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Chloe Kim revealed how she relied on muscle memory and focus to push through: “I had a shoulder brace on that mobilized or kind of restrict some of the restricts a lot of the movement. I couldn’t raise my arm properly at all, so I kind of had to relearn how to do a lot of my tricks because a lot of my tricks require me to use my arms. And I kind of had to figure all that out in 8 days. I think 8 days was the eighth day was the night of the final at the Olympics.”

Nevertheless, Kim scored high despite the pain and the limited training, particularly in the initial runs. She eventually placed second in the competition and took the silver medal. However, the gold was captured by 17-year-old Choi Gaon of South Korea, who made a final charge and, just at the scoring table, beat Kim. And the tale was not finished on the podium, because now, there is an even greater challenge ahead for Kim.

Chloe Kim faces surgery after another battle with injury

Chloe Kim is planning to have surgery soon, and she admitted she could’ve have chosen to do it before the Olympics if the timing had worked out. “I was going to get it immediately after, but then I realized I would have to be in a sling for six weeks. So I decided to just do my thing and get surgery later,” she explained.

But Chloe isn’t new to dealing with injuries. In the 2025-2026 season, she entered a World Cup event at Copper Mountain, Colorado, as part of her preparation for the Winter Olympics. During training, she suffered an injury that forced her to withdraw before her official run. The details were never fully disclosed, but it prevented her from competing in that event. That left her with just one scored run from the qualifying round before she faced the more serious shoulder injury just weeks later.

That was not the first significant blow to Chloe Kim, who had previously experienced an ankle fracture in March 2019 in the Burton U.S. Open halfpipe final. That injury necessitated surgery and kept her out of events till the end of the season. It also caused her to have over two years off snowboarding, with some time without competition at all before returning to the snowboarding sport on its top level.

It is that past of falling, drawing back, and returning stronger that makes her silver in Milan feel more than second place. It was never just about a medal in the end. It was about rushing in the halfpipe, being aware that your shoulder might slip out at any point and making the decision to drop in!