San Francisco’s Eileen Gu wins 6th Olympic medal; later learns her grandmother died

LIVIGNO, Italy — Eileen Gu snatched a gold ribbon off a gift basket on her way to the mountain Sunday and stuck it in her pocket just in case.

Just in case?

If her 16-day odyssey at the Milan Cortina Games taught the world anything, it’s that there are no sure things in sports. Especially when the athletes flip 15 feet over rock-hard snowscapes for a living.

But that gold ribbon Gu tied into a bow in her hair after her curtain-closing Olympic performance on the mountain did, in fact, match the color medal she won in the women’s ski halfpipe final.

And that gold medal also was the third she’s won over two Olympics – more than any athlete in her sport.

And she is now 6 for 6 – six events, six medals, three of them gold, three silver – over a still-young Olympic career that has cascaded well beyond sports, veering into geopolitics, inclusion and, as the gold ribbon reminded us, fashion.

“I took a big risk in trusting myself,” Gu said of her frenetic quest this year, “and I’m glad that I did.”

Gu, born in the United States but competing for her mother’s homeland of China, knows that the modeling career, the fame, the platform she commands and the message she sends wouldn’t be possible if she weren’t the best freeskier in the world. She was also the only woman willing to divide her attention between halfpipe, slopestyle and big air over the 2 1/2-week marathon of Olympic risk-taking.

It was a quest that limited her training, rest and sometimes her sanity. Never her confidence, though.

“I’m not a gambling woman, but if I were, I took a pretty big bet on myself,” Gu said. “There was a chance everything could go wrong and I could have walked away with nothing, because I was trying to do too much. But in my head, even if everything crashes and burns, I tried. I’ll never regret trying.”

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The risk of doing too much once again reared its head on the first run of this bluebird day in Livigno – the halfpipe bathed one half in sun, the other in shade a day after a snowstorm postponed the final. Gu lost balance on the landing of her very first jump of the contest, forcing her to abandon the run toward the top of the pipe.

Each of her qualifying rounds at these Olympics involved a fall and a must-make return that she landed every time just to get to the final.

In halfpipe, largely viewed as the premier event in the sport and also the event where Gu has won 15 of her 20 World Cup titles, the odds of Gu not landing any of her three runs in the final seemed slim. In fact, it was none.

She ended up with not just the best score of the 32 runs by 11 athletes, but the best two scores of them all. Her second run was a 94 and her last was a 94.75.

“I tried for gold,” said Li Fanghui, who made this the first 1-2 finish for China in this event. “But my first goal was for silver.”

Gu won because she flies higher than almost everyone (except for bronze medalist Zoe Atkin), does more rotations than anyone (highlighted by two 900-degree spins in opposite directions) and, in a key separator in a 1.75-point win over Li, tried one more trick than her Chinese teammate (Gu and most skiers did six, Li only tried five).

“She is ‘Wonder Woman,'” New Zealand’s eight-place finisher Mischa Thomas said.

Gu was exhausted but happy after landing her 16th run in 16 days

After Gu landed smoothly on her final run, she lifted her right hand in the air, skied to the scoring area, then pumped her fist. That was trip No. 16 down the mountain over 16 days – every one of them dangerous in their own way, every one of them packed with pressure.

“I’m so tired, but I’m so happy,” she said.

At the end, with the gold medal secure, she wasn’t too tired to run in her ski boots to the side of the halfpipe, if only to reach over the blue fencing and share the love with a cohort of fans who celebrated her every appearance in the pipe by chanting “Gu Ailing, Gu Ailing,” which is the Chinese way to say her name.

She isn’t the only skier who brought a handful of fans to this remote village in northern Italy. But she’s the only one who brought a following. For these Olympics, they came from Stanford, from San Francisco, from China and many points in between.

Part of the reason she skis for China was to get more eyeballs on her sport. She recited figures from the Chinese government that said more than 300 million people have taken to the mountain in that country since she first burst onto the world stage at the Beijing Games four years ago.

“She brings a lot of visibility to our sport, which is awesome, especially in China,” said Canada’s Amy Fraser, the only woman to beat Gu in a halfpipe over the last four years. “That’s my favorite event we go to. People treat us like proper celebrities when we go there.”

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An event defined by nations, allegiances makes Gu a perpetual lightning rod

What country she competes for will follow Gu around until she’s through skiing, and probably beyond.

Four years ago, the debate felt more supercharged because it was fresher and the Olympics were in the same country she was representing.

This time, a lot of it felt rehashed and reheated.

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on Fox News last week. Gu stuck to the message she’s been preaching all along: the more the merrier when it comes to her sport and, as for her critics, “I encourage those people to use that energy and direct it toward something that makes the world better in their own way.”

With the six medals, Gu stands alone among those in the relatively new sport of freeskiing. She’s also shooting up there in the pantheon of Olympians in any sport.

“I walked away as the most decorated free skier of all time, male or female,” Gu said. “I have the most gold medals of any free skier ever, male or female, and that is something that I’m so, so proud of. It’s unbelievable to me.”

By taking chances, Eileen Gu is building a sport. She’s winning medals. Yet on a sunny Sunday at the Olympics where she defended her title on the halfpipe, maybe the best prize of all was knowing her grandma would be proud.

That’s why her tears flowed freely. Not long after the victory gave her a record-breaking third Olympic gold medal in freeskiing, Gu learned her grandmother, Guozhen Feng, had died.

“She was a steam ship,” Gu said. “This woman commanded life, and she grabbed it by the reins, and she made it into what she wanted it to be.”

It’s the way Gu, the 22-year-old – born in America but competing for her mother’s homeland of China – likes to approach skiing, school, life and everything she touches.

“She inspired me so much,” Gu said. “The last time I saw her before I came to the Olympics, she was very sick, so I knew that this was a possibility. I didn’t probably say that I was going to win, but I did promise her that I was going to be brave. She’s been brave.”

Gu knows she has naysayers and knows what to say to them

Gu has had to exhibit a certain amount of bravery, too, over her young life.

There’s bravery on the mountain, where she puts her health (and her life) on the line with every jump. Then, there’s the will of steel she needs to deal with her world off the slopes.

Barely a day has passed at either of her two Olympics when Gu doesn’t get asked about the country she competes for almost as often as her freeskiing.

Not a day passes, either, where she doesn’t lean into the same message she’s been delivering for years: “If people disagree with me, if they have other skill sets, which I’m sure they do, then I encourage them to direct it elsewhere,” she said. “To make the world better in their own way.”

At her post-victory news conference, the well-spoken Stanford student handled all the questions – about geopolitics, her brain power, the future of skiing – head-on, but always bringing the conversation back to the reason she has captivated an audience in a sport that doesn’t always do that.

“The difficulty of competing in three events, making finals in three events,” she said. “I had to compete six times. I kind of liken it to a marathon, with the pace of a 100-meter dash. … I took a big risk in trusting myself, and I’m glad that I did.”

By trusting, and winning, Gu has become the most decorated freeskier in the short history of the sport at the Olympics.

Beyond the medals, she is growing the sport. She cited a Chinese government study saying more than 300 million people in China have tried snow sports for the first time since she captured her three medals there at the last Olympics.

“There are girls in China whose lives are going to be touched by the beautiful and wonderful power of sport,” Gu said. “That, in and of itself, is absolutely measured impact that I think I had always wanted.”

A life after skiing focused on ‘global beneficial impact’

Asked what her life after skiing might entail, Gu stayed with the broad theme of “global beneficial impact” but said her pillars right now remain skiing, sports and fashion. She’ll be at a fashion show in Milan this week.

Things could change down the road.

“I think it’s more assessing your individual skill set and trying to say, ‘OK, what is the way that I can as a person do the most good in the world?'” Gu said. “Right now, I’m young. I’m energetic.”

Competitors catching up?

She’ll need it.

The example she has set for skiing has made this a better sport. Four years ago, when Gu closed out those Olympics with a gold on the halfpipe, there was a tinge of resignation among the other skiers. “A machine,” Canada’s runner-up Cassie Sharpe said back then. And American Carly Margulies agreed that Gu was skiing at “a level that’s pretty unattainable for a lot of us.”

Now, there’s a sense they’re catching up. Britain’s bronze medalist Zoe Atkin actually jumped higher out of the halfpipe than Gu. China’s Li Fanghui finished second and had she tried six tricks instead of five, who knows what might have happened?

“She’s a great skier, and she raises the level for everyone else,” said Canada’s Amy Fraser, who finished fourth and is the lone skier to beat Gu over the past four years. “But she’s not unbeatable.”

In a way, that’s exactly what Gu wants.

“If I went to a middle school and beat everybody at freestyle, it’s not exciting for anybody, right?” she explained.

Once her news conference was over, she exited out a side door, then climbed a grandstand for a few more pictures, a few more hugs. Her grandma didn’t see this victory. But Gu couldn’t have done it without her.

“That’s why I keep referring to this theme of betting on myself and being brave and taking risks,” Gu said. “It actually goes back to that promise I made my grandma. I’m really happy that I was able to uphold that and hopefully do her proud.”