Chloe Kim's college friend was hilariously unaware she was a superstar snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist

• Chloe Kim is an Olympic gold medalist and arguably the best freestyle snowboarder of her generation.
• But when she studied at Princeton in 2019, one of her friends on campus had no idea who she was.

Chloe Kim is a history-making Olympic superstar and one of the most famous young athletes on the planet.

But to one friend at college, she was — briefly — just another classmate from Southern California.

In a profile for TIME, the now 21-year-old freestyle snowboarder recalled struggling to escape her newfound celebrity when she arrived on Princeton University's picturesque campus in the fall of 2019. Kim's peers would ask her to pose for selfies, and the unwanted attention eventually drove her to avoid common spaces and instead spend time off-campus.

As her first semester wore on, the Olympic gold medalist was better able to navigate the situation and find friends who "didn't know much about her," as TIME's Sean Gregory wrote. One such friend, an Alabama native named Christian Pollard, recalled spending time with Kim "eating off campus a lot."

But the junior pre-med student didn't know why her new pal "didn't want to put herself" in spaces like dining halls or rec rooms. She had no idea who Kim was or what she had accomplished just over a year earlier.

So when Princeton had its first snowfall of the season that year, Pollard assumed that Kim — a Southern California native who, like herself, grew up in warm weather — might be elated. She even texted her to ask if she had ever seen snow before.

It turns out she had.

Four years after becoming the youngest woman ever to win Olympic gold in snowboarding, Kim is ready to hit the halfpipe once again for the 2022 Beijing games.

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.