Barstool Radio Host Fired, Apologizes For Crude Comments About Olympic Snowboarder Chloe Kim

Chloe Kim has won the hearts of many following her gold medal win in snowboard halfpipe and funny comments at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, but one Barstool reporter took his remarks about her a step too far. 

Chloe Kim Barstool radio host comments

In a broadcast on the controversial news outlet’s radio show Dialed-In with Dallas Braden, co-host Patrick Connor made sexually inappropriate comments about the 17-year-old Korean-American snowboarder.

“No doubt, and in fact just to keep it on that tip, her 18th birthday is April 23, and the countdown is on baby, ’cause I got my Wooderson going,” said Connor. “That’s what I like about them high school girls.”

Connor continued:

“She’s fine as hell! If she was 18, you wouldn’t be ashamed to say that she’s a little hot piece of a—. And she is. She is adorable. I’m a huge Chloe Kim fan.”

The host’s comments rapidly began circulating on social media and several people were unsurprisingly alarmed. Connor eventually apologized for his lewd remarks on Twitter, and has been fired from his position at San Francisco-based sports-radio morning station KNBR. The station’s parent company, Cumulus Media, confirmed the host’s dismissal.

“Yesterday in a weird attempt to make people laugh I failed,” Connor wrote. “My comments about @chloekimsnow were more than inappropriate they were lame & gross. Im truly sorry Chloe. You’ve repped our country so brilliantly. I apologize to my colleagues & the listeners for being a total idiot.”

Kim, a first-time Olympian, is a first-generation American who parents emigrated from South Korea in 1982. She is only the second American snowboarder (after Shaun White) to have scored a perfect 100, a feat she accomplished at the X Games in 2016. Kim has reportedly been treated with much respect from the Korean media during the Pyeongchang Olympics. One outlet even called her by her birth name, “Sun Kim.”

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called Connor’s comment “sort of stupid” in an online post published Wednesday night, and also shared a statement from WEEIsports-talk radio in Boston, which has come under fire in recent weeks for several on-air incidents of inappropriate commentary.

Barstool has gained a reputation for being an insensitive sports news site, particularly in the way it talks about women. The outlet was denied credentials at Super Bowl LI last year.

In one 2017 incident, a Barstool employee made offensive remarks about ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown host Samantha Ponder. In a third controversy in December, Barstool Sports editor in chief Keith Markovich wrote a piece about a high school girl’s viral video, and described the student as “a hot Texas cheerleader.” The story was deleted after the girl’s mother stated in the comments section that her daughter was 16 years old.

Connor’s remarks come amid the #Metoo movement that has taken the U.S. and other countries by storm as women across dozens of industries — entertainment, journalism, politics, sports, and tech among others — have been revealing their stories about being sexually harassed or assaulted by prominent men.