Golden girl Chloe Kim paid tribute to her father Jong today and then joked about how her fame is affecting him too.
The newly crowned women’s halfpipe gold medallist said: ‘My dad’s always like, “Chloe, I’m a celebrity now, I need a bodyguard”.
‘My dad always likes a couple of beers, a couple of cold ones with the boys.
‘He was actually just drinking the beer while walking with me and my publicist was like “You can’t do that Jong put that down”, and he’s like, “Why? I can have a beer, I’m 52”. So he’s a free spirit.’
Jong certainly deserves one after the years he’s dedicated to making his youngest daughter a snowboarding star – a fulfillment of his American dream.
Golden girl Chloe Kim paid tribute to her father Jong (pictured together) today and then joked about how her fame is affecting him too
Her biggest fan! Jong was pictured in the crowd with a big ‘Go Chloe!’ sign while she competed for a gold medal in Pyeongyang
The newly crowned women’s halfpipe gold medallist said: ‘My dad’s always like, “Chloe, I’m a celebrity now, I need a bodyguard”. ‘My dad always likes a couple of beers, a couple of cold ones with the boys
Jong first came to the U.S. in 1982, with juts $800 and a Korean-American dictionary. He worked several minimum wage jobs at first, saving up enough money to eventually complete an engineering degree at California State University, Long Beach.
After divorcing from his first wife, the mother of his two eldest daughters, Jong moved to Switzerland for a time where he started a travel agency for Koreans. It was there that he met Chloe’s mother, Boran Yun, who was in the country for business. The couple moved to California together in 1998, and Chloe was born two years later, on Easter Day.
Chloe and her father actually got into snowboarding together, taking their first trip to Mountain High, a small ski resort about two hours northeast of their home in Torrance, California, when Chloe was just four years old.
Jong was interested in the sport, and thought he could convince his wife to learn with him if he got Chloe to come along.
That plan didn’t pan out but Chloe certainly took to the snow, and quickly started surpassing her father in skill.
Golden girl Chloe Kim (pictured) paid tribute to her father Jong today and then joked about how her fame is affecting him too
Golden girl: Chloe Kim poses with her medal after winning the Snowboard Ladies’ Halfpipe Final on Day four of the Winter Games
Chloe Kim of the US celebrates her victory with her parents. Talking of her father, she said: ‘My dad’s always like, “Chloe, I’m a celebrity now, I need a bodyguard”
Chloe Kim of the United States takes to the air on her snowboard on her way to winning the halfpipe title
(Left to right) Silver medalist Jiayu Liu of China, gold medalist Chloe Kim of the United States and bronze medalist Arielle Gold of the United States pose during the victory ceremony for the Snowboard Ladies’ Halfpipe Final on day four of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games
By the age of five, she started going off jumps and hitting rails, gaining enough attention that one snowboard coach at Mammouth Mountain asked her family if she was interested in entering a program.
But the Kim family had plans of their own.
Instead, Chloe was sent off to live with her aunt in Geneva, Switzerland, where she started training with the Swiss snowboard team in the third grade.
Jong says his Olympic dream for his daughter began that year, when he visited Chloe and took her to go snowboarding at Snowpark Zermatt.
Some teams were training at the resort and one snowboarder caught his eye.
‘For a regular person, she was really good,’ he recalled to ESPN. ‘But her coach told me she placed 10th in Torino. I couldn’t believe it. I knew Chloe could get to her level in two years. I flew home and told my wife, “I can bring Chloe to the Olympics.”‘
At age 10, Chloe was brought home to California where she joined the Mammoth Mountain snowboard team, in part to save money.
‘Normally lessons are $100,’ Jong says. ‘But they only charged $450 for the whole season if you were on the team.’
It was also that year that her father quick his engineering job to focus on Chloe’s burgeoning career fulltime.
By that point in time, Jong was financially stable enough to do so, thanks to his several side businesses – including a car wash – and real estate portfolio.
‘I was not very poor,’ Jong told the Press Telegram. ‘I was OK financially. I don’t need to be a millionaire. I was OK financially so I thought, let’s do this.’
For the next several years, the father and daughter traveled the world to attend competitions while Chloe’s mom stayed back in California, working for Korean Air.
But all the hard work seems to have paid off. At 13 Chloe was good enough to qualify – and almost certainly medal – at the Sochi games, but too young. Since then, she’s has also become the only person since Shaun White to get a perfect 100 score in the halfpipe.
All of this has made her dad exceptionally proud. The icing on the cake, of course, is that Chloe won gold in his home country, in front of her whole extended family, many of whom still live there.
Her father’s sacrifices are something Chloe did not forget as she spoke to reporters after her big win on Monday.
‘My dad has definitely sacrificed a lot for me and I don’t know if I could do it, if I was in his shoes,’ Chloe said. ‘Leaving your life behind and chasing this dream because your kid is passionate about this sport.
‘I think my dad most definitely sacrificed a lot for me,’ Kim said. ‘I don’t know if I could do that if I was in his shoes. To quit work and just travel with your kid full time and leaving your wife behind and just really chasing after this dream with your kid because your kid is really passionate about this sport. And I’m always so thankful for that and I think today I really did it for my family and everything they’ve done for me.’
Speaking of her Korean heritage, the 17-year-old from Long Beach, California, said: ‘I definitely, when I was younger, struggled a little to understand my identity and who I wanted to be and I think having my family to be there throughout the whole process was so helpful.
‘I surrounded myself with such nice people that it definitely made it much easier for me.
‘I feel like I got to represent both the US and Korea today.’
Speaking of her Olympic experience, she added: ‘Even being at the Olympics was such an insane experience. Just the idea of coming out here seemed unreal.
‘I just wanted to have a good run and to do that was so amazing and obviously taking the win was just icing on the cake.
‘It was very, very exciting to watch the contest today. Women’s snowboarding has progressed, it’s such a fast pace, it’s such an honor to be a part of that and I feel like there’s going to be some cool tricks in the future.
‘Going into my third run, just knowing that I had won the gold medal was insane and I went around and hugged everyone on my team, like my coaches and everyone that’s been there for me but I was like “Just don’t tell me, I don’t want to start crying, I have another run to do”.
‘I’d hate to go home with the gold medal knowing I could have done better so I think that third run was for myself.
‘What we do is we always want to one-up ourselves no matter what.
‘At the end of the day it’s all about snowboarding, it’s not about how many points you have or where we are on the list, you want to push yourself and that’s the best way to do it.
‘It’s just thinking about how hard I’ve worked and all the sacrifices my family has made to get me to this point.
‘I always want to push myself and see what I can do. I love surprising myself and other people.
‘I watched the Olympics growing up and it was such a big part of my life, just wanting to be there.
‘It’s such an insane thing to watch on tv and it just makes you want to be there even more.
‘So that’s another thing I’ve tried to take in at this Olympics, just enjoy the entire experience.
‘I said before I even competed I had already had way more fun at this Olympics than Sochi.
‘So that in itself was a victory but going home with some hardware doesn’t hurt either.’