American Chloe Kim said she was fired up and ready to defend her Olympic snowboarding title at the Beijing Olympics after a nearly two-year career hiatus caused by pandemic anxiety and pressure from Fame.

Kim made history at the PyeongChang Games in 2018 when she won gold in the halfpipe at 17, becoming the youngest woman to win an Olympic title in snowboarding.

As qualifying for the women’s snowboarding halfpipe begins on Wednesday, she arrives in Beijing with victories in all five events she has competed in since returning to competition a year ago.

“My goal here is to do the best possible run. This is the race I want to do and I really hope to be able to do it here. I’ve been thinking about this competition for a long time,” Kim explained.

After her Olympic triumph, the snowboarder struggled to find balance in her non-competitive life.

She said she was gripped by fear of the pandemic, sitting in front of the television in tears, obsessed with news of the spread of the coronavirus.

The snowboarder also felt anxiety over the series of attacks recorded in the United States against people from the Asian community, due to the supposed origin of the Covid in China.

The harsh light of fame and the personal sacrifices that top athletes must make led to Kim once tossing his Olympic gold medal in the trash.

“Wherever I go people recognized me”, some even tried “to break into my house”, she detailed. “It was a pretty big invasion of my privacy” and “something I never thought would happen to me.”

“The only thing I could blame was that medal. But don’t worry, I got it from the trash,” she said.

Exhausted, she hung up her snowboard and went to high school for a year, in part to have the normal experiences of a teenager. “The Olympic year should have been my prom year,” she said.

“After my first Olympic title in 2018, I just had to learn to live my life again,” said the young woman, who will go to study at the prestigious Princeton University in 2023.

Seeing his friends living a normal life made him “want to do something else for a while.” “I’m really grateful and happy that I did,” she said.

Nevertheless, returning to competition “has always been the plan. It’s okay to take a step back if you feel you need some space and now I’m back and I feel so much better than I did. era,” she said.