Eileen Gu won her third medal, and second gold, of the Beijing Olympics.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Eileen Gu turned to face the sun for a moment at the end of her long Olympic Games, her face bathed in light and her eyes closed so she could savor one last moment of competition, a victory run. She already had made history, hugged her coaches and pitched a small celebration at the top of the halfpipe Friday at Genting Snow Park. All that was left was to ski.
The score did not matter. Gu had earned her second gold and third overall medal of these Games with an opening run that would have been good enough for gold and a second run that improved on that by two points at 95.25. On Wednesday night, near the close of a demanding Olympic schedule by any measure but certainly for an 18-year-old, Gu had written a note to herself in her journal to convince her exhausted mind and legs: “I am not tired. I am fresh.”
On Friday, her skiing indicated the note had worked, but her expression betrayed her: At the bottom of the hill, she eschewed her usual excited waving and jumping up and down for a tired smile and a hug for her fellow medalists. In the aftermath of the medal ceremony, she cried tears of joy and relief more than once.
“It has been really difficult, I’m not going to lie,” Gu said. “I’m not going to pretend and say it was easy, because it wasn’t. Walking away as the first action-sports athlete with three medals at the same Olympics, the youngest female freeskier to win a gold medal at the Olympics, the first person representing China to win a freeski medal at all, let alone three. It is an honor beyond words, and also a dream come true.”
Gu’s performance not only made her the first action-sport athlete to win three medals in one Olympic Games — it put her atop the career leader board, tied with a handful of athletes, including Shaun White, Jamie Anderson and Kelly Clark, as the most decorated action-sport athletes in Olympic history. No snowboarder or freestyle skier has won more than three career medals.
She did it in her Olympic debut, tackling big air — added to the Olympic program this year — with a gutsy final jump, slopestyle with a clean run that pulled her from eighth place to second and halfpipe with easy confidence. She considers halfpipe her strongest discipline and, unlike in her first two events, led the field by a healthy margin after her first run. She was the only skier to score at least a 90 on her first go, her dominance so obvious that she hardly had to wait for her scores to pop up, unlike other competitors who stood staring at the scoreboard for minutes while judges evaluated their tricks.
Her ability to soar higher over the halfpipe wall and execute more difficult grabs on the ends of her skis rather than closer to her feet set her apart.
“She’s a machine. She came out here, she’s perfect,” said Canada’s Cassie Sharpe, who earned silver with a 90.75 in her third run. “I think she came into this sport knowing she had to be absolutely flawless. Her tricks are awesome, she grabs everything, she’s so clean, whereas a lot of us, we’ve been in this sport for a little while, and we got away with some stuff. We got away with missing grabs … she came in just swinging at us. So we just had to pick it up and catch up again.”
Jerry Brewer: Eileen Gu is an original, and the world is going to have to deal with itGu improved as she went along, building on a 93.25 to reach a 95.25 in her second.
She bested Sharpe and bronze medalist Rachael Karker, also of Canada, who scored an 87.75 in her first run of the day. There were three Americans in the final: Hannah Faulhaber (sixth, 85.25), 2018 bronze medalist Brita Sigourney (10th, 70.75) and Carly Margulies (11th, 61).
No other skier pushed Gu competitively throughout the final, and any weight she might have felt because of the history at stake melted before her third-run victory lap, which she said was also partly for safety. Wind howled at Genting Snow Park on Friday, and Gu’s height affects her more than it does her shorter competitors.
“It was a little scary,” Gu said, “so I decided to take a victory lap. First victory lap I’ve ever taken, and I felt like I deserved it.”
Soaring above the competition, Gu clinched gold before her third and final run.
Pride mixed with relief when before her third run Gu heard the announcer belt, “Eileen Gu, two-time Olympic gold medalist!” She described it as feeling like an exhale after holding her breath for two weeks through competitive pressure and pressure that came from intense media attention.
The 18-year-old was both the face of these Olympics and a flash point even before she began competition. Born and raised in San Francisco, Gu decided to ski for her mother’s native China in 2019 but burst onto the international stage at a time when relations between the United States and China are at a low point.
She has avoided answering questions about whether she renounced her U.S. citizenship — the International Olympic Committee requires athletes to hold a passport from the country they represent, and China does not permit dual citizenship. She has answered questions about doing business with a country with a history of alleged widespread human rights abuses by stating that she does not view skiing as a business, despite appearing in television commercials in China and enjoying sponsorship from Chinese companies. She has reiterated, time and again, that her motivation is nothing more than to inspire people, specifically young girls in China, to take to the snow.
Eileen Gu: Born and raised in America, skiing for ChinaThough she has remained bubbly and breezy in front of reporters, Gu said the attention took a toll mentally and half-joked that she’d like to lie in a sensory deprivation chamber after the Games. She relied on her mother, Yan, to serve as a steadying force as someone “who genuinely has my back, she’s not trying to use me for anything,” she said.
“These few weeks have been emotionally the highest I’ve ever been and also the lowest I’ve ever been, I would say. It has just been a roller coaster of emotions, partially because it has just been so high risk-reward, and I know exactly how much is riding on my performance. Being able to keep my head on my shoulders and keep thinking straight and my head focused on what’s important has been a battle, something that I feel I’ve actually learned about so much throughout this experience.”
Gu’s full legacy is yet unwritten. She has competed in one Olympics, as a teenager no less, so it is tantalizing to imagine her career medal haul and cultural impact if she can keep up with the constant progress that defines action sports.
But on Friday, the future felt far away. As she spoke to reporters wearing a fuzzy panda hat meant to communicate that Gu is still just a kid having fun, she said she had a meal with her grandmother and a nap planned for later in the day. Beyond that, she’ll attend Stanford in the fall and wants to continue her dual careers in fashion and skiing.
“I’m going to see what other avenues I have going for me, and I’m going to enjoy myself,” Gu said. “Do whatever makes me happy. Right now, I still love skiing, so I would love to continue skiing and, yeah. We’ll see.”