Chloe Kim and Hailey Langland may have had their driver’s licenses for less than a year, but the pair of 16-year-olds from California are already veterans on the pro snowboarding circuit.
Both Kim and Langland have X Games gold medals, finishing atop the podium in three superpipe competitions and one big air, respectively. Despite not being old enough to compete in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, this duo is all but assured to represent Team USA in PyeongChang, South Korea, next winter.
Kim, who hails from La Palma, Calif., became the youngest to capture X Games gold at just 14 before slopestyle skier Kelly Sildaru broke her record as a 13-year-old in 2016. Langland, a San Clemente, Calif., native made some history of her own this past January at Aspen’s Buttermilk Mountain. She stomped a double cork 1080 as time expired in the jam format of the big air final — the first time the trick had been landed in a women’s competition.
Kim has 1080s in her bag of tricks, too. She threw down back-to-back 10s at X Games Oslo in 2016 to earn the first-ever perfect score of 100. It’s still so early in their careers that Kim and Langland, each with their own effortless style, has nowhere to go but up. While their peers are bogged down by homework in their high school classes, these two are working just as hard perfecting their crafts at the world’s finest mountain resorts.
There isn’t much Kim and Langland can’t do from a pure talent perspective while strapped into their Burton snowboards. Though the men’s side of the sport — at least competition riding — is so bent on whipping around quadruple corks, Kim and Langland are blending old-fashioned style with progression.
This is just the beginning for them. There will be plenty more X Games, U.S. Opens, Dew Tours, and video parts to film over the next few decades. Strap in for one heck of a ride.
Ethan Kasales 