- Bea Kim is a 19-year-old newcomer on the U.S. women’s halfpipe team for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
- Inspired by teammate Chloe Kim, she is also a passionate climate advocate with Protect Our Winters.
- Kim is set to attend Columbia University to study environmental science.
LIVIGNO, Italy – The 19-year-old grabbed the microphone without hesitation, before looking to her right and her left at her older, more experienced teammates.
Assuredness is not something Bea Kim lacks, even if she is the newcomer on the United States’ women’s halfpipe team, which includes Chloe Kim – the event’s back-to-back Olympic champion – three-time Olympian Maddie Mastro and 31-year-old Maddy Schaffrick.
At the group’s news conference in the Italian Alps ahead of their qualifying round at these 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, the last question revolved around President Donald Trump’s criticism of men’s free skier Hunter Hess over Hess’ pre-Games comments about representing the United States (Trump did not properly reflect what Hess said). It’s a hot-button topic, one that can ignite social media and reach the halls of the West Wing. Shying away would have been a normal response.
Bea Kim didn’t.
‘I think there are a lot of different opinions in the U.S. right now. Obviously, we’re very divided,’ she said. ‘I personally am very proud to represent the United States. That being said, I think diversity is what makes us a very strong country and what makes us so special.
‘I think the four of us sitting here (Monday) are an example of that. We all came from very different backgrounds.’
If that’s not an example of the field Kim is playing, then perhaps it’s her passion for the environment and involvement in Protect Our Winters (POW), an organization that has led her to address the United Nations and speak at the White House regarding climate change. Or that she is bound for Columbia University in the fall. Or maybe it’s the fact that she could be the breakout star of a U.S. women’s halfpipe team that already features one of the biggest names in the entire delegation, who happens to have the same surname as her.
Bea Kim and Chloe Kim, along with Mastro, actually all grew up going to Mammoth Mountain in California and refer to it as their home mountain. Mastro and Chloe Kim have been her role models for a while, Bea Kim said.
“To be able to be on the same team as them, go to the Olympics together and kind of call them my friends has been just so special,” she told USA TODAY Sports in January through her sponsor, Delta Airlines.
The two Kims are not related, though, even if Bea Kim understands why it might be easy for snowboarding casuals to make the assumption. She actually gets a kick that two of her teammates have the same first name – different spellings, though – and that she and Chloe share a last name.
Bea Kim, who is Korean-Japanese-American, attended the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea − where Chloe Kim won her first of two halfpipe gold medals − with her parents, younger brother and grandparents. They spent time in Seoul, South Korea, and also visited Japan for the first time. It’s a special family memory.
“That was, I think, a pretty pivotal moment in my own career of seeing someone who looked like me just do something super incredible and be able to inspire me to kind of go after this career path,” Bea Kim said.
Chloe Kim was 17 at that time, with Bea Kim six years her junior.
“I mean, honestly, when I was that young, I don’t think I realized how incredible what she was (doing),” Bea Kim said. “I knew what she was doing was amazing, but I didn’t realize how young she was to be able to do something like that. And then now that I’m closer to that age, it’s definitely like, ‘Wow, that was insane.’”
In fourth grade, Bea Kim penned a poem shortly after she joined the Mammoth snowboarding team.
‘I am the gold medalist at the 2022 Winter Olympics,’ she wrote in the piece shared with USA TODAY Sports. ‘I cry tears of joy when the gold medal is placed around my neck.’
Bea Kim may have been a little premature in the premonition. But who says she can’t live up to the final stanza?
‘I dream of being,’ it reads, ‘the best snowboarder in the world.’
Bea Kim’s passion for outdoors, sport fuels academic ambition
Bea Kim’s passion for the outdoors and career in snowboarding is as full-circle as it gets, she said. Everything her family did – whether it was camping, hiking, snowboarding or surfing – took place in nature.
The family memories built are unforgettable and eventually led to competitive snowboarding, which led to dropping out of school and starting online school so that she could travel with the U.S. snowboarding team.
Those global treks have shown her the world, but competitive snow sports follow a similar travel schedule year over year, and athletes often wind up in the same places at the same time of year.
“It’s really easy to kind of see how climate’s affecting all of everything,” Kim said.
From glaciers receding to fluctuating snow levels, it is impossible to ignore. She eventually made contact with the non-profit POW.
“They’ve really opened me up to a lot of new experiences where I’ve gotten to kind of share my story and just talk about climate and the snow sports industry and life as an athlete on the road,” Kim said. “So that’s kind of led me to Columbia where I’m going to study that hopefully.”
Kim’s sport is dependent on the weather – not just snow, either. If the winds are howling, it’s harder for her to do her job. If it’s dumping snow, it’s harder than a “bluebird day” when riders can actually tell the difference between the sky and the wall of a halfpipe.
“And those bluebird days are kind of a little bit further and far between now,” said Kim.
Two summers ago, Kim was scheduled to be in Australia for three weeks for a training camp. But it was the warmest season they had on record in years. She spoke to locals, they had never seen it that warm before. “Crazy weather” prevented the training group from even going up to the mountain, and Kim ended up leaving the camp early because the conditions made it unrideable.
The Olympic halfpipe site in Livigno was supposed to host a test event prior to the Games, but the lack of snow in the Alps nixed the dry run.
“It’s wild,” she said.
Bea Kim’s most crucial opponent? Herself
Bea Kim’s first competition in more than 11 months came at Copper Mountain in December 2025. On Christmas Eve the prior year, she underwent shoulder surgery after a series of subluxations destabilized her arm. The goal, she said, was to tighten the joints and muscles before the Olympic year.
Kim described her week at Copper as “actually a crazy little week.”
It was the first Olympic qualifier. The practice days leading into the qualifying round were tough. She was not feeling like herself at all.
“But once I dropped into the competition, I kind of was just reminding myself, ‘You know how to do this, your body knows how to do this.’ It’s all muscle memory,” she said.
Kim is the type of competitor who believes the pressure of the competition makes her a better performer.
“It’s always kind of a testament to willpower, I think,” she said.
Kim finished third at Copper, which went a long way to securing her spot on the Olympic roster. To be on the podium in Italy, Kim will have to beat out her own teammates, an impressive international contingent with competitors from Australia to Japan to Switzerland and another opponent she’s quite familiar with.
Herself.
“I often say that my biggest competitor is myself, my own brain,” she said. “I think to make it on the podium, I need to really push myself to my limits and do things that scare me.”
All she knows is that she’ll leave everything in the pipe and won’t finish with any regrets.
“Hopefully that ends up standing on the box with a medal,” Kim said. “So, we’ll see. (I’ll) get back to you.”