Korean snowboarders Choi Ga-on and Lee Chae-woon have successfully advanced to the finals of the men's and women's halfpipe events for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Lee Chae-woon scored 82.00 points, finishing 9th among 25 competitors in the men’s halfpipe preliminaries held in Livigno, Italy, on December 12. Earlier, Choi Ga-on achieved 82.25 points, securing 6th place in the women's qualification. Both athletes are set to compete for medals, with Choi's finals scheduled for 3:30 AM on December 13 and Lee's on December 14.

The snowboarding halfpipe competition involves athletes performing aerial tricks as they descend a semi-cylindrical slope. Competitors are scored based on height, difficulty, execution, and variety of their tricks. The top 12 athletes, determined by their highest scores from two attempts, advance to the finals. In Lee Chae-woon's first qualifying attempt, he executed five jumps flawlessly, including the challenging 'switch backside double cork 1080', which secured him an early spot in the finals. However, he stumbled on a more ambitious trick in his second attempt, showcasing his ongoing development as an athlete.

Lee Chae-woon made his Olympic debut during the 2022 Beijing Games as the youngest member of the Korean team but struggled to qualify for the finals, placing 18th in the preliminaries. Since then, he has shown remarkable improvement, winning the men’s halfpipe at the World Championships in March 2023, making him the youngest champion in history and an impressive feat for Korean skiing and snowboarding. Furthermore, he achieved dual victories in both halfpipe and slopestyle at the 2024 Gangwon Winter Youth Olympic Games and won slopestyle at the 2025 Harbin Winter Asian Games. His fellow competitors, Lee Ji-o and Kim Gun-hee, unfortunately, did not qualify for the finals.