Radio host sacked for making lewd comments about 17-year-old Olympic gold medallist

A US radio presenter was fired after making lewd comments on air about 17-year-old snowboarder Chloe Kim.

On Tuesday (13 February), the teenager clinched the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in the women's half-pipe snowboarding, but comments over her appearance landed Patrick Connor in hot water.

Appearing on the Barstool Sports' SiriusXM show, Connor, who worked for San Francisco Bay area station KNBR, described Kim as "fine as hell" and a "hot piece of ass".

"If she was 18, you wouldn't be ashamed to say that she's a little hot piece of ass. And she is. She is adorable. I'm a huge Chloe Kim fan," said Connor.

Kim will turn 18 on 23 April and Connor added the "countdown was on".

His employer failed to see the funny side of the comments and Connor was promptly fired, Jeremiah Crowe, program director of KNBR-AM, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Connor subsequently took to Twitter to apologise for his comments. "Yesterday in a weird attempt to make people laugh I failed," he wrote.

"My comments about Chloe Kim were more than inappropriate, they were lame & gross. I'm truly sorry Chloe. You've repped our country so brilliantly. I apologise to my colleagues & to the listeners for being a total idiot."

However, according to USA Today, Connor is still employed on Barstool Sports, where he issued a separate statement to apologise for his behaviour.

"Just quickly I want to apologize to Chloe Kim and her dad," he said in a recorded statement, according to the Sacramento Bee. "They didn't deserve my stupid, foolish and immature comments."

Kim did not reply to Connor's comments, at least not publicly. The Olympic champion is a prolific Twitter user and before her final run on Tuesday, she posted on the popular social media network that she was getting "hangry" - bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger - after failing to finish her breakfast.

However, not even that stopped Kim from clinching a first gold medal after landing her signature back-to-back 1080s to earn a near-perfect score of 98.25