Rumors would fly, but no one, save a select few, would really know if it had actually happened or not. Then the big release. Ender in a video part, maybe. A fold out poster in the mag? The sky was the limit.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BixMVcvlhQS/?taken-by=chloekimsnow

Nowadays, we see it in the Instagram feed, give it a quick watch for a few seconds, maybe toss two or three fire emojis into a comment, and move on. In one week we’ve already seen two NBDs – one from Maddie Mastro as she becomes the first female pro to land a double crippler in the pipe, and now Chloe Kim becomes the first female pro to put down a frontside 1260 in the pipe – both given fanfare only on social media.

We figured it was worth a bit more than that – we could at the very least put it on the website. So we fired off a few questions to Kim, who seems a bit unphased by it all and more focused than ever. But from the looks of it, she’s already set up to have an absolutely mental upcoming season.

First off, congratulations! How long have you been working on this trick?

I’ve worked on that trick for probably 3 days!

Can you tell us a bit about the setup – where were you, what the conditions were like?

I was in Mammoth for our spring camp! The conditions were pretty good so it was a perfect place to try it!

Have you had this trick on your mind for a while?

I didn’t really have it in mind – it was a bit of a last minute decision.

How does it feel to finally put this one down, and do you think we’ll be seeing it in competition next season?

It feels pretty good to put it down and you’ll definitely see it in competition next season!

Do you ever get dizzy from spinning so much?

Not really, at first I had no idea where I was so I just felt lost but eventually figured it out.

How long did it take you to learn this one, when did you start trying 12s?

It took me three days. The first couple of days I only did one of them because it was so hard to go past 10 but I got the hang of it on the third day.

Did you ever practice it into an airbag? What’s your stance on using them for training?

I did not do them into the airbag. I’ve used them to try other tricks but when it comes to spinning I’d rather just do it on snow.

It probably took about 7-10 tries.

This season seems to be one of the most progressive in memory, any thoughts on why that might be?

I have no idea, but all I can say is I love it and I’m stoked to see so much progression and be a part of it.

Hopefully you’ve gotten a bit of time off now that the Olympic frenzy has died down – what have you been up to?

I’ve been chillin’ super hard. A lot of stuff happens after the Olympics, so I’ve just been keeping up and stoked that I was able to take a break from everything and just go snowboard. Feels pretty damn good to be back on the snow.

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