Chloe Kim falls short of Olympic three-peat, taking silver as Choi Gaon wins women's halfpipe

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — Chloe Kim fell short in her bid to become the first Olympic snowboarder to win three consecutive gold medals, finishing second to Choi Gaon of South Korea in the women's halfpipe on Thursday.

Choi dethroned the two-time defending champion after she bounced back from an ugly crash that had silenced the crowd. The 17-year-old drew another gasp when she jumped into the lead with a score of 90.25 on her final run.

Kim had one more shot to get back on top, but the 25-year-old American wiped out on her final run and settled for silver. Japan’s Mitsuki Ono claimed bronze.

Kim, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from South Korea, had encouraged Choi throughout her young career. Now she has handed over the Olympic title to the teenager she inspired.

“It’s all about passing the torch, so there’s no one else I would have rather stood next to on the podium than her,” Kim said. “I’m so proud of her and I’m so excited to see what she does next.”

Choi's chances in the final looked to be in jeopardy when she slammed into the incline of the halfpipe and slid to the middle of the course, where she remained for several minutes. After being attended to by medical staff, she rode off the course unassisted.

“After I took my first half I thought, ‘Do I need to give up?’” Choi said. “I cried, clenched my teeth, and started walking and felt the energy came back into my legs. I thought I can keep trying and I could get back into these Games.”

It wasn't clear that she would even come back for her second run, but she did and got it down. Then came her turn down the halfpipe that was good for gold.

“This feels surreal. I can’t believe my first Olympic medal is gold,” Choi said.

Choi became the youngest X Games winner in 2023 at age 14. Now the first-time Olympian is first non-American woman to win gold in snowboarding’s premier event since Torah Bright of Australia in 2010. Kaitlyn Farrington won for the U.S. in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics, and Kim triumphed in Pyeongchang and Beijing.

Kim injured her shoulder four weeks ago, disrupting her lead-in to the Games. She competed wearing a brace, which didn’t stop her from dominating the field in qualifying.

But after Thursday's final, the California native said she would need surgery on her shoulder — and that winning an Olympic medal of any color was a victory given that she was riding hurt.

“I think that there was a lot of conversation happening about the three-peat,” she said. “I was thinking about it before, but I think the minute I injured myself I was like, that doesn’t matter anymore. So this feels like a win to me because a month ago it didn’t seem too possible.”

Another gold-medal celebration had looked likely after Kim scored 88 points on her first run, while Choi and most of the other finalists wiped out.

But Kim couldn’t stay upright on either of her remaining runs, and her score from the first wasn’t good enough.

Kim is not alone in letting the milestone of golds in three consecutive Winter Olympics slip away at these Games. Czech Ester Ledecka fell short in Alpine snowboarding’s parallel giant slalom, as did Austria’s Anna Gasser in big air. Both were also two-time defending champions.

American snowboarding great Shaun White won three gold medals on the halfpipe, but not consecutively. He won in 2006, 2010 and 2018. He finished fourth in 2014.

White was in the crowd Thursday and cringed after Kim fell on her final run. Kim's boyfriend, Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, was also in her cheering section, along with Snoop Dogg. Like many in the crowd, they had gathered to watch one of the biggest names in snowboarding go for Olympic history.

Instead, they watched Choi wipe away tears as she held up her medal, one step up on the podium from the rider who has been her idol.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

From left, silver medalist United States' Chloe Kim, gold medalist South Korea's Choi Ga-on and bronze medalist Japan's Mitsuki Ono celebrate after the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

South Korea's Choi Ga-on competes during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Gold medalist South Korea's Choi Ga-on reacts after winning the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Silver medalist United States' Chloe Kim, left, claps as gold medalist South Korea's Choi Ga-on celebrates winning the the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

United States' Chloe Kim reacts after her second run during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

United States' Chloe Kim competes during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Cleveland Browns' Myles Garrett and United States' Chloe Kim kiss after Kim won the silver medal in the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

South Korea's Choi Ga-on celebrates with team members after her run during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

United States' Chloe Kim waits for her score during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

United States' Chloe Kim crashes during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

South Korea's Choi Ga-on reacts to her run during the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl's fate.

In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives.

Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued.

The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.

Three justices issued a scathing dissent, calling what happened in this court “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation.”

An attorney for the Masts declined to comment, citing an order from the circuit court not to discuss the details of the case publicly. Lawyers representing the Afghan family said they were not yet prepared to comment.

The child was injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in September 2019 when U.S. soldiers raided a rural compound. The child’s parents and siblings were killed. Soldiers brought her to a hospital at an American military base.

The raid was targeting terrorists who had come into Afghanistan from a neighboring country; some believed she was not Afghan and tried to make a case for bringing her to the U.S. But the State Department, under President Donald Trump’s first administration, insisted the U.S. was obligated under international law to work with the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross to unite the child with her closest surviving relatives.

The Afghan government determined she was Afghan and vetted a man who claimed to be her uncle. The U.S. government agreed and brought her to the family. The uncle chose to give her to his son and his new wife, who raised her for 18 months in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Mast and his wife convinced courts in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, to grant them custody and then a series of adoption orders, continuing to claim she was the “stateless” daughter of foreign fighters.

Judge Richard Moore granted them a final adoption in December 2020. When the six-month statute of limitations ran out, the child was still in Afghanistan living with her relatives, who testified they had no idea a judge was giving the girl to another family. Mast contacted them through intermediaries and tried to get them to send the girl to the U.S. for medical treatment but they refused to let her go alone.

When the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took over, the family agreed to leave and Mast worked his military contacts to get them on an evacuation flight. Mast then took the baby from them at a refugee resettlement center in Virginia, and they haven’t seen her since.

The AP agreed not to name the Afghan couple because they fear their families in Afghanistan might face retaliation from the Taliban. The circuit court issued a protective order shielding their identities.

The Afghans challenged the adoption, claiming the court had no authority over a foreign child and the adoption orders were based on Mast repeatedly misleading the judge.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday wrote that the law prohibiting challenges to an adoption after six months is designed to create permanency, so a child is not bounced from one home to another. The only way to undercut it is to argue that a parent’s constitutional rights were violated.

The lower courts had found that the Afghan couple had a right to challenge the adoption because they were the girl’s “de facto” parents when they came to the United States.

Four of the Supreme Court judges — D. Arthur Kelsey, Stephen R. McCullough, Teresa M. Chafin, Wesley G. Russell Jr. — disagreed.

“We find no legal merit” in the argument that “that they were ‘de facto’ parents of the child and that no American court could constitutionally sever that relationship,” they wrote. They pointed to Fluvanna County Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore’s findings that the Afghan couple “are not and never were parents” of the child, because they had no order from an Afghan court and had not proven any biological relationship to her.

The Afghans had refused DNA testing, saying it could not reliably prove a familial connection between opposite-gender half-cousins. They insisted that it didn't matter, because Afghanistan claimed the girl as its citizen and got to determine her next-of-kin.

The Supreme Court leaned heavily on a 38-page document written by Judge Moore, who granted the adoption, then presided over a dozen hearings after the Afghans challenged it. He wrote that he trusted the Masts more than the Afghans, and believed that the Masts’ motivations were noble while the Afghans were misrepresenting their relationship to the child.

The Supreme Court also dismissed the federal government’s long insistence that Trump’s first administration had made a foreign policy decision to unite her with her Afghan relatives, and a court in Virginia has no authority to undo it. The government submitted filings in court predicting dire outcomes if the baby was allowed to remain with the Marine: it could be viewed as “endorsing an act of international child abduction,” threaten international security pacts and be used as propaganda by Islamic extremists — potentially endangering U.S soldiers overseas.

But the Justice Department in Trump’s second administration abruptly changed course.

The Supreme Court noted in its opinion that the Justice Department had been granted permission to make arguments in the case, but withdrew its request to do so on the morning of oral arguments last year, saying it “has now had an opportunity to reevaluate its position in this case.”

The Supreme Court returned repeatedly to Moore’s finding that giving the girl to the family “was not a decision the United States initiated, but rather consented to or acquiesced in.”

The three judges who dissented were unsparing in their criticism of both the Masts and the circuit court that granted him the adoption.

“A dispassionate review of this case reveals a scenario suffused with arrogance and privilege. Worse, it appears to have worked,” begins the dissent, written by Justice Thomas P. Mann, and signed by Chief Justice Cleo E. Powell and LeRoy F. Millette, Jr.

A Virginia court never had the right to give the child to the Masts, the dissent said.

They castigated the Masts for “brazenly” misleading the courts during their quest to adopt the girl.

“We must recognize what an adoption really is: the severance and termination of the rights naturally flowing to an otherwise legitimate claimant to parental authority. Of course, the process must be impeccable. An evolved society could not sanction anything less than that. And here, it was less,” Mann wrote. “If this process was represented by a straight line, (the Masts) went above it, under it, around it, and then blasted right through it until there was no line at all — just fragments collapsing into a cavity.”

FILE - Marine Maj. Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, arrive at Circuit Court, Thursday, March 30, 2023, in Charlottesville, Va. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

FILE - U.S. Marine Corp Major Joshua Mast, center, talks with his attorneys during a break in the hearing of an ongoing custody battle over an Afghan orphan, March 30, 2023, at the Circuit Courthouse in Charlottesville, Va. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

FILE - Marine Maj. Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, arrive at Circuit Court, Thursday, March 30, 2023 in Charlottesville, Va. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)