Chloe Kim’s continued domination of the halfpipe has left her so far above the rest of the sport that she needed just one run to defend her Olympic gold medal.

But then again defying gravity has never been the issue for the 21-year-old from Torrance. It was life back down on earth that was the problem.

Kim became the first woman ever to win consecutive Olympic Games halfpipe titles at the Genting Snow Park H&S Stadium in the mountains above Beijing on Thursday morning (Wednesday night PT) with a commanding performance that capped four often trying years in which she struggled in the glare of the spotlight launched by her first gold medal triumph in South Korea.

United States’ Chloe Kim competes during the women’s halfpipe finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Kim opened the competition with a run that began with a frontside 1080, threw in a 900 and a switch backside 540. By the time Kim touched down with another 1080, she had landed a 94.00 score that made it clear the only real competition was for the silver.

The gold secure, Kim was free to gamble, taking two shots at a cab 1260 (3½ spins) on her final two runs, falling both times.

It didn’t matter. Kim had given the U.S. its fifth halfpipe gold medal in the last six Olympic Games.

“I can’t believe I’m at my second Olympics,” she said, “let alone winning a second gold medal.”

Kim, who joins fellow American Shaun White (2006, 2010) as the only snowboarders to defend their Olympic titles in the halfpipe, was America’s sweetheart after her victory at the 2018 Games. You could hardly turn on the TV without seeing Kim on a late-night talk show or a commercial for Toyota or Nike, at the ESPYs.

G-Z wanted to rap with her. Actress Frances McDormand gave her a shout-out during her Academy Award acceptance speech.

The Oscar, McDormand gushed “is what Chloe Kim must have felt like after doing back-to-back 1080s in the Olympic halfpipe.”

Everyone knew Chloe. And everyone wanted Chloe to be Chloe all the time.

And that was the problem.

On the halfpipe, she had freedom, room to breathe. Real life was suffocating.

She was swarmed at restaurants. Mobbed at the mall. Stalked on-line. Bullied, she said, by teammates. Kim was so overwhelmed by her celebrity, bouncing back and forth between resentment and depression, that at one point she threw her gold medal into a trash bin at her parent’s house.

“After I won my first Olympic gold medal in 2018, I experienced something incredibly difficult to overcome and it was just learning how to relive my life,” Kim said. “Going anywhere, people recognizing me, people figuring out where I lived, trying to break into my house. It was a pretty big invasion of privacy. That was something that I’d never thought would happen to me.

“Incorporating that into my new life was very challenging and at that time the only thing that I could blame was that medal.”

Kim now is able to laugh at the memory.

“Don’t worry, I got it out of the trash,” she said. “It’s not in there anymore.”

But she couldn’t find was normalcy.

“There’s a lot of sacrifice that comes with being a professional athlete,” Kim said. “I sacrificed my normal childhood. When kids were going to school or going to prom, I was training and competing at really big events, like the Olympics.

“The Olympic year would have been when I would go to prom. Just seeing how my other friends were living their lives and feeling that I didn’t get those experiences, these kinds of things made me feel like I wanted to do something else for a bit, and I’m really grateful and happy I did that.”

She broke an ankle at the U.S. Open in March 2019. That fall, she enrolled at Princeton. But even in the Ivy League, the selfie and autographs requests, the pointing and whispering continued to hound her. Kim avoided the dining hall and popular spots on campus.

Eventually, the novelty of seeing an Olympic champion on her way to the library wore off. She found new friends, one of whom was so unaware of her celebrity that when winter hit Princeton the friend wondered if Kim had ever seen snow before.

Eventually, she returned to the mountain, and she hasn’t lost a contest since.

“I think I was burnt out a couple of years after the Olympics, which is why I took the time to go to school for a year,” Kim said. “But I think those were really important lessons for me to learn.

“It’s OK to take a step back if you feel like you need some space and now I’m back and I feel so much better than I did then.”

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Kim had a rough practice Thursday, which explained her pounding the snow with a sense of relief after her opening run.

“I was really excited to land my first run,” she said. “I really struggled during practice and so it just felt unreal to be able to do that and pull it off.”

Kim is also better equipped to handle life after the Games. She plans to do a lot of driving when she returns home. She talked of maybe hitting Mammoth in the spring.

“I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned from the last Olympics is being as open as possible,” she said. “It’s unfair to be expected to be perfect and I’m not perfect in any way. But I think after my last Olympics put that pressure on myself to be perfect at all times and that would cause a lot of issues at home. I would be really sad and depressed all the time. I was hurting the people I loved the most by doing that.

“And so I think the biggest challenge for me now is to just be as open as possible because I hope that maybe one day a little girl can hear my story and be inspired to keep going, to never give up, that it’s OK to have a bad day, you can move and on and you will come out at a better place after all.”

Queralt Castellet of Spain took silver in her fifth Olympic appearance. Sena Tomita of Japan held off Cai Xuetong of China for bronze.

Relive the gold medal-winning run from @ChloeKim! #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/EP7RnV2qxf

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 10, 2022

“I’m not gonna lie, I had one of the worst practices I’ve ever had…but when I was getting ready to drop in I just reminded myself – It’s a brand new run.”

And that run won Chloe Kim GOLD. #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/c99vCJs4SQ

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 10, 2022