Chloe Kim lost an Olympic squeaker in halfpipe. Did the judges make the right call?

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — Chloe Kim never said a word about it. The new halfpipe silver medalist sounded genuinely happy for the woman who beat her.

But even in snowboarding — billed as the most chill of the judged sports that populate the Winter Olympic program — everything is a matter of opinion.

The small debate bubbling up after Gaon Choi's razor-thin victory over Kim in the halfpipe Thursday night was whether the judges got it right.

At the heart of that debate was that Kim landed the hardest trick in the sport — a double-cork 1080 — and Choi did not.

“The fact that you are flipping twice upside down while spinning a 1080, the consequences of getting that wrong are a lot higher than doing a switch-backside 900,” said Todd Richards, a 1998 Olympic snowboarder who does commentary for NBC, comparing the hardest tricks by both riders.

Richards broke down the contest on an Instagram post that received more than 100 responses, many of them thoughtful and from insiders, including 1998 Olympic bronze medalist Shannon Dunn-Downing, who commented “I felt like their runs were sort of a toss-up."

The Choi-Kim result is something less than a "controversy," the likes of which are hitting figure skating and an ice dancing contest in which the French judge scored the French winners a significant amount higher than anyone else on the panel.

Choi's winning run was, indeed, a beauty filled with difficult spins approached from tough angles that were different at every turn. And while Kim also went upside down on her last hit, making her the only rider to do that twice, her run didn't have Choi's switch-backside 9 — riding backward and starting the spin facing up the halfpipe — that is largely considered the toughest direction in the sport.

In scoring a halfpipe run, judges don't give specific credit or take deductions for individual tricks.

They take the entire package into account, including how high the riders jump (Choi's biggest air was about eight inches higher than Kim's), the difficulty and variety of the tricks, how good they look and an element called “progression,” which credits athletes who try new tricks or link them together in different ways.

They assign numbers, from 1-100, to each run. But the number that comes out is not an added-together mix of elements but, rather, an attempt to rank the runs against the others. For instance, no rider would score a perfect 100 in her first run because then there would be nowhere to place something better that might come later.

Kim got a score of 88 on her first run. She fell on the next two, including after Choi's winning run of 90.25.

“So, Chloe's 88, in my personal opinion, if she had dropped that on her second or third go, she would've been in the lead,” Richards said, pointing to the idea that riders as good as Kim are often judged against themselves.

The international skiing federation, which runs the contest, declined to put media in touch with judges.

There has always been healthy debate in snowboarding over what should get the most love — jumping and flipping, or spins, backward riding and showy grabs.

A window into the judges' thinking also came in examining the difference between third and fourth. Japan's Sara Shimizu was the only rider other than Kim to land a double cork as part of a complete run. She finished one point behind teammate Mitsuki Ono for bronze.

This debate seemed destined to flow into Friday night's men's contest, where, for years, Scotty James has been doing the sport's most technical riding, then letting judges decide between that and the sport's new obsession with triple corks.

In the women's contest, the judging panel did not simply hand the title to the rider with the most flips. When it was over, Kim was happy, and if she was crying “foul,” nobody heard it.

“Sometimes I think maybe people wish that would show up in our sport a little bit,” Richards said. “But ultimately it's snowboarding. It's not really a cutthroat sport like that.”

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

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/Lindsey Wasson)

Silver medalist United States' Chloe Kim holds her medal after 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 laughs while trying to display the American flag competes after the women's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will send the world's largest aircraft carrier to the Middle East to back up another already there, a person familiar with the plans said Friday, putting more American firepower behind President Donald Trump's efforts to coerce Iran into a deal over its nuclear program.

The USS Gerald R. Ford's planned deployment to the Mideast comes after Trump only days earlier suggested another round of talks with the Iranians was at hand. Those negotiations didn't materialize as one of Tehran's top security officials visited Oman and Qatar this week and exchanged messages with the U.S. intermediaries.

Already, Gulf Arab nations have warned any attack could spiral into another regional conflict in a Mideast still reeling from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Iranians are beginning to hold 40-day mourning ceremonies for the thousands killed in Tehran's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month, adding to the internal pressure faced by the sanctions-battered Islamic Republic.

The Ford's deployment, first reported by The New York Times, will put two carriers and their accompanying warships in the region. Already, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying guided-missile destroyers are in the Arabian Sea.

The person who spoke to The Associated Press on the deployment did so on condition of anonymity to discuss military movements.

It marks a quick turnaround for the Ford, which Trump sent from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean last October as the administration built up a huge military presence in the lead-up to the surprise raid last month that captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

It also appears to be at odds with Trump’s national security strategy, which put an emphasis on the Western Hemisphere over other parts of the world.

Trump on Thursday warned Iran that failure to reach a deal with his administration would be “very traumatic.” Iran and the United States held indirect talks in Oman last week.

“I guess over the next month, something like that,” Trump said in response to a question about his timeline for striking a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. “It should happen quickly. They should agree very quickly.”

Trump told Axios earlier this week that he was considering sending a second carrier strike group to the Middle East.

Trump held lengthy talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday and said he insisted to Israel's leader that negotiations with Iran needed to continue. Netanyahu is urging the administration to press Tehran to scale back its ballistic missile program and end its support for militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as part of any deal.

The USS Ford set out on deployment in late June 2025, which means the crew will have been deployed for eight months in two weeks time. While it is unclear how long the ship will remain in the Middle East, the move sets the crew up for an unusually long deployment.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran at home faces still-simmering anger over its wide-ranging suppression of all dissent in the Islamic Republic. That rage may intensify in the coming days as families of the dead begin marking the traditional 40-day mourning for the loved ones. Already, online videos have shown mourners gathering in different parts of the country, holding portraits of their dead.

One video purported to show mourners at a graveyard in Iran's Razavi Khorasan province on Thursday. There, with a large portable speaker, people sang the patriotic song “Ey Iran,” which dates to 1940s Iran under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. While initially banned after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran's theocratic government has played it to drum up support.

“Oh Iran, a land of full of jewels, your soil is full of art,” they sang. “May evil wishes be far from you. May you live eternal. Oh enemy, if you are a piece of granite, I am iron.”

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

In this photo released by the Oman's Foreign Ministry, Steve Witkoff, White House special envoy, center, shakes hands with Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi as Jared Kushner, left, looks on during their meeting prior to Iran and the U.S. negotiations, in Muscat, Oman, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (Oman Foreign Ministry via AP)

FILE - In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Gerald R. Ford embarked on the first of its sea trials to test various state-of-the-art systems on its own power for the first time, April 8, 2017, from Newport News, Va. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy via AP, File)