Chloe Kim is an Olympic gold medalist and arguably the best freestyle snowboarder of her generation.- When she enrolled at Princeton University in 2019, she didn't want fame to impact her experience.
Chloe Kim is one of the most accomplished young athletes on the planet.
But not long after her meteroic rise to fame, fortune, and Olympic glory, Kim just wanted to be like any other college student.
In a recent TIME profile, the superstar Olympian and, arguably, the greatest young snowboarder on the planet described the challenges that came along with her collegiate pursuits in 2019. Just one year after she became the youngest woman ever to win a gold medal in
She needed a change of pace and, if she's being honest, she was looking to escape her newfound celebrity.
Doing so was much harder than she anticipated. She recalled attending an ice cream social with other students during her first night on the stunning Ivy League campus.
It was normal enough at first. But then "as I was leaving, the girls came up to me, they're like, 'Chloe, can we get a picture, can we get a picture, can we get a picture?'"
"And I was like, 'I don't want to be here as the snowboarder. I want to be here as a student. I want to be like everyone else. I want to be normal,'" Kim recounted to TIME's Sean Gregory. "That's why I came here. And I was like, 'No, you can't get a photo with me. I don't want this to be a thing, because it's going to make me uncomfortable.'"
Her new classmates did not take kindly to the refusal.
"Immediately after that, everyone was like, 'Oh, she's such a bitch. Blah blah blah,'" Kim said.
Eventually, she found her way at Princeton, but her college experience was undoubtedly different than the ones her peers enjoyed. She avoided dining halls and other public spaces, and often opted to eat and spend time off campus.
When Princeton sent students home due to the pandemic in March 2020, Kim decided to give competitive snowboarding another try. She hasn't ruled out a return to the prestigious university; now that she's two years older and a lot more experienced in handling the spotlight, she may have an easier time on campus.
"I don't care anymore," Kim said. "I guess I would tell my younger self that even though things get hard and people are mean to you or whatever, it'll get better and you're going to realize that you have so much good happening in your life, that the bad isn't going to hurt you."
"It's just annoying," she added. "It's like an annoying mosquito in the background, just flying around."
In a few short weeks, Kim will debut three new tricks that are "an upgrade from everything I've done" in hopes of winning another gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Qualifications for the women's halfpipe are set to begin on February 9, with the final taking place February 11.