Chloe Kim, American snowboarder
Credit: © Cameron Spencer, Getty Images

March is Women’s History Month, an annual observance of women’s achievements and contributions to society. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature woman pioneers in a variety of areas.

Chloe Kim brought home the gold medal in the women’s halfpipe snowboarding event at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games held in Beijing, China. The halfpipe is an acrobatic event performed in a deep trough. Kim also won the gold medal in the women’s halfpipe event at the 2018 Winter Olympics held in Pyeongchang, South Korea. In Pyeongchang, she became the youngest woman to win a snowboarding gold medal in the Winter Olympics. In Beijing, Kim became the first woman to win multiple Olympic golds in the women’s halfpipe snowboarding event.

Kim won the snowboarding gold medal in the women’s halfpipe competition during the 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Credit: © Leonard Zhukovsky, Shutterstock

Kim has also gained international success in slopestyle events. In slopestyle, competitors perform on special courses that feature various obstacles. Kim was too young to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. However, at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, she won gold medals in both the halfpipe and slopestyle. She thus became the first American woman to win a snowboarding gold medal at the Youth Olympic competition.

Kim had previously earned international recognition for her performances in the X Games, an action sports competition held in the summer and winter and modeled on the Olympics. She won a silver medal in the superpipe, a variation of the halfpipe, at the 2014 Winter X Games. In 2015 and 2016, she won three X Games gold medals in the superpipe. In 2016, Kim became the first female to score a perfect 100 in the superpipe at the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix. She won the gold medal in the superpipe at the X Games again in 2018, 2019, and 2021.

Kim was born on April 23, 2000, in Long Beach, California. Her parents had immigrated to the United States from South Korea. Kim began snowboarding at the age of 4 and began competing as a member of Team Mountain High in California at the age of 6. She trained in Switzerland from the ages of 8 to 10 and then returned to the United States. In the fall of 2019, Kim enrolled at Princeton University, in New Jersey. She took a leave of absence from her studies in 2020 to concentrate on snowboarding.

Vonetta Flowers
Credit: © Everett Collection, Shutterstock

Winter is a time for hockey, ice skating, skiing, sledding, and snowboarding. Have you ever heard of bobsledding? Bobsledding is a fast, dangerous winter sport in which teams of two or four persons ride down a steep, icy course in steel and fiberglass sleds. The sleds may reach speeds up to 90 miles (145 kilometers) per hour. The team with the fastest total time after either two or four runs wins the competition.

One famous bobsledder is Vonetta Flowers. Flowers is a former American Olympic bobsledder. In 2002, she became the first Black American to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympic Games. She tried bobsledding on a whim and took the sport quickly.

Vonetta Jeffrey was born on Oct. 29, 1973, in Birmingham, Alabama. She began running as a child. In high school, she was an all-star track and basketball athlete. Flowers was a seven-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) All-American in track at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She competed in several events, including the long jump, triple jump, 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and relays. She married John Flowers, an American track coach and former track athlete, in 1999.

Vonetta Flowers won a gold medal in the long jump at the 1994 Olympic Festival. The festival was a U.S. national competition held between Olympic Games years. Flowers competed in the long jump at the 2000 Olympic trials but failed to qualify. While at the trials, Flowers’s husband saw a flyer for tryouts as a brakeman for bobsledding. In two-person bobsledding, the team includes a driver and a brakeman. The brakeman helps to push off at the beginning of the run and brakes the sled to a stop at the end of the run. As a trained track athlete, Flowers outperformed many competitors at the bobsled trials.

At the bobsled trials, Flowers met the American bobsledder Bonny Warner. In 2001, Flowers and Warner finished in the top 10 in all 7 World Cup races. However, Warner replaced Flowers with another brakeman. Flowers almost quit the sport before the American bobsledder Jill Bakken recruited her as brakeman.

In 2002, at the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, Flowers and Bakken competed against Warner’s team, which was favored to win. Flowers and Bakken broke the course record on their first run and won the first-ever gold medal in women’s bobsled. Flowers retired from competition after the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy. She began working as a track coach at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Flowers’ story inspires many to try a new sport or hobby. What would you like to try this year?

American skier Mikaela Shiffrin
© Stefan Holm, Shutterstock

March is Women’s History Month, an annual observance of women’s achievements and contributions to society. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature woman pioneers in a variety of areas. 

Last month, on February 15, the champion American alpine (downhill) skier Mikaela Shiffrin won her sixth combined World Championship. A combined competition consists of a downhill race and a slalom. (In a slalom, the skier must pass through marked gates in a zigzag fashion.) Shiffrin has won more world championship titles than any other American skier.

Shiffrin won the slalom gold medal at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, becoming the youngest slalom champion in Olympic history. In 2018, she won the giant slalom gold medal and the combined silver medal at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She also won the slalom World Championship in 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019 and the super G (once called the super giant slalom) World Championship in 2019.

The slalom and the super G are two of the skiing races that make up the alpine World Cup. The cup is awarded annually to the men and women who have won the most points in a series of five races—the slalom, giant slalom, downhill, super G, and combined. Shiffrin initially concentrated on the slalom and giant slalom. She won the World Cup slalom title in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019. In 2019, she also won the World Cup giant slalom title. In 2016, she began competing in the other three World Cup events. Shiffrin won the World Cup super G title in 2019. She won the overall World Cup title in 2017, 2018, and 2019 for earning the most combined points in all the events. In 2018, Shiffrin won her 36th slalom race, breaking the record of 35 victories held by the Austrian skier Marlies Schild.

Shiffrin was born on March 13, 1995, in Vail, Colorado. She began skiing at the age of three. Her family moved to New Hampshire when she was eight. Shiffrin graduated in 2013 from Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont, a high school for young skiers. In 2011, she made her World Cup debut at the age of 15, winning the bronze medal at Lienz, Austria. Later that year, at the age of 16, she won the slalom title at the United States National Championships in Winter Park, Colorado. She thus became the youngest skier to win that event. In 2012, she won her first World Cup race and was named World Cup Rookie of the Year.