Finally, on the last day of the Milano Cortina Olympic Games competition, obtained her gold medal.
After winning silver medals in the slopestyle and Big Air competitions, Gu excelled in her final two runs of the halfpipe skiing at the Livigno Snow Park, successfully defending the gold medal she won in the same event in Beijing. Li Fanghui of China took the silver, while the athlete from Great Britain, who, like Gu, is a Stanford student, won the bronze.
With this victory, Gu became the second person to secure gold or silver in each of their first six Winter Olympic individual events, joining Russian cross-country skier Lyubov Yegorova. According to USA Today, after the win, security had to urge to leave the freeski venue in Livigno because they just wanted to shout her name.
“I’m extremely proud of how I performed at this Olympics,” Gu told reporters after the event. “I took a risk this time.” Gu mentioned that she hadn’t skied halfpipe for two months before the Olympics, missed a halfpipe training session due to competing in the Big Air finals, and hadn’t participated in Big Air for four years. Gu was the only freeskier to compete in all three freeskiing events.
She departs from Milano Cortina as the most decorated Olympic freeskier ever.
“Sports are truly honest,” she states. “Because you can’t deceive yourself. You know when you stayed late while others didn’t. You know when you arrived early while others didn’t. You know when you gave 100% in training, day in and day out, for months on end. And so, it’s not about, you know, at the last minute telling myself a cheerful little phrase and calling it quits.”
Gu became emotional at the end of her Olympic press conference, revealing that she had just learned that her grandmother, who had been ill, had passed away. “She was a very significant part of my life growing up, and someone I looked up to greatly,” says Gu.
The victory concluded a whirlwind Olympics for Gu. As was the case four years ago, her performances and public remarks attracted an excessive amount of attention and renewed interest. Vice President J.D. Vance, for instance, was the latest prominent figure to comment on her decision to represent China, where her mother Yan emigrated from to the United States, rather than the United States, the country of her birth. Gu spent summers in Beijing, but did most of her formative training in the Lake Tahoe area and attended school in San Francisco.
When discussing Gu, Vance said in a Fox News interview that he hoped someone who grew up in the U.S. would “want to compete for the United States.” In response, Gu playfully replied to Vance’s words: “I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s nice.” On Sunday, when asked about representing China, Gu returned to familiar ground, highlighting the number of people in that country, especially girls, who have become interested in her sport.
The gold also marks the end of a four-year period during which Gu struggled with panic attacks and faced online harassment in both the United States and China, where some citizens view her as a privileged outsider. She also sustained several injuries in the lead-up to the Games. Gu relied on journaling to gain perspective. “Skiing isn’t who I am, but it makes me feel most like myself because it is a physical expression of the values by which I define myself,” Gu wrote in her journal in December after winning a World Cup event in China. “There is an even more transcendent experience in the transitional space before those glorious moments, when I know I will win even before I take off… when I know my body will do precisely what I command it to do because my trust in myself is absolute.”
“I’m an introspective young woman,” Gu, 22, said on Sunday. “I spend a lot of time in my own thoughts, and it’s not a bad place to be.”
At an Olympics where some people questioned why she hadn’t won a gold medal, Gu relished sharing her truth after the victory. “The fact is, I get to become every day the kind of person that eight-year-old me would admire,” Gu said. “I would be obsessed with myself today. Are you kidding? I would love myself. And I think that’s the greatest show of confidence one can have.”
Whether that’s seen as empowerment or arrogance likely depends on your view of Gu’s national representation. She plans to return to Stanford, where she’ll be a junior, but first, Milan fashion week is approaching. She’s also a professional model and has commitments in the city.
There’s no Winter Olympian quite like Eileen Gu. Multinationalist. Fashion icon. And a six-time Olympic medalist, who just ended her Games on top.