Snowboard
Two-time Olympic snowboard champion Chloe Kim has announced she will be taking the 2022/23 season off from competition before returning to launch a campaign for a third Olympic gold medal.
The 22-year-old Beijing 2022 halfpipe gold medallist cited her mental wellbeing as to why she has made the decision to sit the year out:
"Just for my mental health," Kim explained to Cheddar News. "[I] just want to kind of reset. I don't want to get right back into it after such a fun, but draining year, at the same time, knowing that it was an Olympic year.
"I just want to enjoy this moment, take it all in and then back to it when I'm feeling ready, but as of now the plan is most definitely to go after a third medal." - Chloe Kim to Cheddar
It's not the first time in Kim's career that she has called for a 'time out.'
The Korean-American also took a full season off after she won her first Olympic title at PyeongChang 2018. Then just 18, Kim had recently enrolled at Princeton University and took the down time to turn her attention fully to college life and away from the slopes.
"I grew up snowboarding. I started when I was four years old. It's my identity at this point and when I started to lose love for it, I decided to go to school because I felt like I needed to surround myself with people who had nothing do to with snowboarding," continued the six-time X Games gold medallist to Cheddar.
"That was so refreshing because it's nice to know that I can make friends with people that weren't snowboarders or weren't in the industry or in the actions sports world."
When she eventually returned to competition nearly two years later she did so in emphatic fashion, immediately taking back up her mantle as the one to beat.
By the time the Games in China arrived the American headlined the women's halfpipe event as a favourite and she certainly did not disappoint, taking the gold with a score of 94.00 on her opening run.
"I worked so hard for four years to get back here and do this again," Kim told Olympics.com after clinching her second Olympic title.
"I really think if it weren't for everyone supporting me, I wouldn't be here with another gold medal."
Team USA will be hoping that a, once again, refreshed and revitalised Kim emerges from her time off ready and raring to win a third Olympic gold.
MORE: Earth Day 2022: Chloe Kim leads YOG veterans tackling climate change