At long last, on the final day of competition at the Milano Cortina Olympic Games, Eileen Gu got her gold.
After winning silver medals in the slopestyle and Big Air competitions, Gu nailed her final two runs of the halfpipe skiing at the Livigno Snow Park, defending the gold medal she won in the event in Beijing. Li Fanghui of China finished with a silver, while Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin, like Gu, a Stanford student, won the bronze.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]With the victory, Gu became the second person to win gold or silver in each of their first six Winter Olympic individual events, joining Russian cross-country skier Lyubov Yegorova, according to Nick Zaccardi of NBC Sports. After the victory, according to USA Today, security had to compel Chinese fans to leave the freeski venue in Livigno, as they just wanted to scream her name.
Read more: ‘I Don’t Believe in Limits.’ How Eileen Gu Became Freestyle Skiing’s Biggest Star
“I’m so proud of how I’ve done at this Olympics,” Gu told reporters after the event. “I took a gamble this time.” Gu noted that she hadn’t skied halfpipe in two months prior to the Olympics, missed a halfpipe training session due to competing in the finals of Big Air, and hadn’t competed in Big Air in four years. Gu was the only freeskier to compete in all three freeskiing events.
She leaves Milano Cortina as the most decorated Olympic freeskier ever.
“Sports are really honest,” she says. “Because you can’t lie to yourself. You know when you stayed late and other people weren’t there. You know when you showed up early and other people weren’t there. You know when you gave 100% in training, day in, day out, for months, for months. And so it’s not about, you know, at the last second I tell myself a chipper a little line and call it a day.”
Gu grew emotional at the end of her Olympic press conference, sharing that she had just found out that her grandmother, who had been sick, had passed away. “She was a really big part of my life growing up, and someone I looked up to immensely,” says Gu.
The victory finished off a whirlwind Olympics for Gu. As was the case four years ago, her performances and public comments attracted outsize attention and renewed interest. Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, was the latest prominent figure to weigh in on her choice to represent China, where her mother Yan emigrated to the United States from, instead of 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 went to school in San Francisco.
Talking about Gu, Vance said in a Fox News interview that he hoped someone who grew up in the U.S. would “want to compete with the United States.” According to USA Today, Gu replied in a playful manner to Vance’s words: “I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s sweet.” Gu returned to familiar territory on Sunday when asked about representing China, pointing to the number of people in that country, particularly girls, who have become engaged with her sport.
The gold also caps off a four-year cycle during which Gu struggled with panic attacks and encountered online trolling in both the United States and China, where some citizens see her as a privileged interloper. She also suffered several injuries in the lead-up to the Games. Gu leaned on journaling to help her perspective. “Skiing is not who I am, but it makes me feel most myself, because it is a physical manifestation of the values I define myself by,” Gu wrote in her journal in December, after winning a World Cup event in China. “There is an even more transcendent experience in the luminal space before those glory moments, when I know I will win before I even take off .. when I know my body will do exactly what I command it to do, because my trust in myself is so absolute.”
“I’m an introspective young woman,” Gu, 22, said on Sunday. “I spend a lot of time in my head, and it’s not a bad place to be.”
At an Olympics in which some people wondered why she hadn’t won a gold medal, Gu enjoyed speaking her truth after victory. The fact is, I get to become every day the kind of person that me at age eight would revere,” Gu said. “I would be obsessed with me today. Are you kidding? I would love me. And I think that’s the biggest flex of all time that you can have.”
Chances are, whether that’s empowerment or arrogance depends on your take on Gu’s national representation. She plans to head back to Stanford, where she’ll be a junior, but first: Milan fashion week is coming up. 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 six-time Olympic medalist, who just ended her Games on top.
