LIVIGNO, Italy — Even if she’s not outwardly courting controversy, it always seems to find her. Eileen Gu is 22 years old, competing in her second Olympic Games, so often at the center of a storm.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m carrying the weight of two countries on my shoulders,” Gu said in Livigno last week, where the freeskier claimed her fifth career medal Monday night with a silver in the women’s big air event. She’s doing so under the glare of one of the most intense spotlights at these Games, but unlike Ilia Malinin, Mikaela Shiffrin and Marco Odermatt, so little of that glare is tied to her performance.
Each time Gu unclips her boots from her skis, the throng is waiting, nearly 100 deep. It can take her up to two hours to shuffle through her obligations with the international media, and she’s often probed with the same questions, over and over. She is engaging, illuminating and introspective in this setting, seizing her biggest stage to showcase some of her greatest skills, effortlessly dancing between English and Mandarin, discussing President Trump one minute and the physics of her jumps the next. After winning silver in slopestyle last week, Gu briefly broke away from the assembly line of cameras to celebrate with the Chinese fans who’d been waiting an hour in the cold, crying for her attention. “The Snow Princess,” they call her.
“She has the craziest life out of everyone,” said Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud, who took gold in the event.
Gu’s been the most in-demand athlete in Livigno, according to the venue’s media manager, Egon Theiner. “I’m an author, I work with words, I hear her talk and I think, ‘Oh my God!’” the 50-year-old Theiner said.
She’s become bigger than skiing. Bigger than sport.
“Fame was never my goal,” Gu said. “It’s about introducing the sport to more people.”
The question is: Do we believe her?
She’s the American-born, American-raised, American college student who listens to American music — Metro Boomin, A$AP Rocky, even blues legend B.B. King — while she competes for the Chinese flag. She’s been called a “traitor” by former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and labeled “ungrateful” and “shameful” by conservative pundits for her 2019 decision to leave the United States team and compete for her mother’s native country.
She says she’s been attacked on her college campus, Stanford University, where she was admitted in 2022 despite a petition — started by parents of prospective students and Chinese Americans — to keep her out. “Physically assaulted on the street,” Gu said. “The police were called.” (Stanford police referred The Athletic to its department of public safety; as of publication, a request had not been returned.) “I’ve had death threats,” Gu added. “I’ve had my dorm robbed.”
All of it — her divisive decision to represent China, her continuing pursuit of history in the women’s freeski events, her exploding celebrity — has come at a cost.
“I’ve gone through some things as a 22-year-old that I really think no one should ever have to endure, ever,” Gu said.
Gu has been the focus of criticism ever since her 2019 decision to switch to compete for her mother’s native China. She still lives in the United States. (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images)
What remains undeniable is her athletic prowess: She is, already, the most accomplished women’s freeskier ever, with a record 20 World Cup wins, two Olympic golds and three silvers to her name. “A once-in-a-generation kind of athlete,” American snowboarding legend Shaun White told The Athletic. “She’s doing runway shows, winning medals, attending Stanford all at the same time. It’s nuts. She’s such an anomaly.”
Indeed, few modern-day athletes have springboarded their success in a small-time sport more effectively. With a footprint in two of the world’s most populous countries, Gu is a sports marketer’s dream. She has modeled for Victoria’s Secret and posed for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and graced runways in Milan and Paris. She is sponsored by Red Bull and Porsche from the West and Alta and TLC Electronics from the East. Forbes recently reported that Gu is the highest-paid athlete, male or female, at these Games. She rakes in in $23.1 million a year. Only $100,000 of that comes from skiing.
She enjoys the freedoms of living in America while simultaneously capitalizing on the marketing possibilities that come from representing China. And Gu’s defense of her 2019 decision, while satisfying few stateside, has never really changed.
“In the U.S. growing up, I had so many idols to look up to,” she said at the last Olympics, where her stardom erupted after she became the first slopestyle skier to win three medals at a single Games. “But in China, I feel like there are a lot fewer of those. I’d have a much greater impact in China than in the U.S., and that’s ultimately why I made my decision.”
It’s important to note that she was 15 at the time. She recently told Time magazine that the financial considerations that come with representing Chinese companies were never a factor.
“My biggest goal has always been to bring the sport to more young people, especially girls,” Gu said last week. “I gave my first speech on Title IX and women’s sports when I was 11, and I’ve been pretty consistent this whole time.”
But so often left unsaid by Gu are the moral ambiguities that come with choosing to represent a country that has been heavily criticized by Human Rights Watch, among other watchdog groups, for denying rights of freedom of expression and for persecuting government critics. (Human Rights Watch has flagged the U.S. for denying freedoms and persecuting critics under the Trump administrations, as well, both when Gu decided to represent China and now.) What isn’t ambiguous is how significantly Gu has benefited financially from her decision.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Gu and fellow American-born figure skater Zhu Yi, who’s also competing for China at these Winter Games, were paid a combined $6.6 million by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau in 2025, and all told, have been paid $14 million over the past three years. Neither Gu’s representatives nor the Chinese national organizing committee responded to a request for comment when contacted by The Athletic. The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee offers medal bonuses (up to $37,500 for golds) through its “Operation Gold” program but does not pay salaries to athletes.
Gu has been roundly criticized over the years on these fronts, especially in America. No matter how many times she is asked, her story stays the same. She sees herself as a trailblazer, the little girl from San Francisco who hated the fact that her first ski team was made up of boys. “I really wanted to be a boy, so I could have friends,” she said. It manifested in the way she dressed and the way she spoke. As she grew up, it was her blossoming love for fashion that helped Gu find her purpose. Her college entrance essay for Stanford was on the intersection of femininity and power, “using sport and fashion as those two vectors,” she explained.
A throng of fans greets Gu after Monday’s big air final. The popular Gu is a marketing force, reportedly earning over $23 million per year. (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
Skiing, then, simply became the vehicle that brought her to the world’s attention.
“A rising tide raises all boats, and so I’m honored and privileged to have the platform that I do, and I take it with great responsibility,” she said.
But skiing, Gu said, remains “me in my truest form.”
“I’m not here because I have to be,” she said after her first day of qualifications in Livigno, asked about her unrivaled resume in the sport. “If I wanted to sit back and do nothing, theoretically, I could. But I’m here, 100 percent of me, because I want to be. I’m here because I love this, because this is what I was born to do. I’m here because this is the greatest privilege on earth, and because it’s the greatest show on earth, and because I want to represent women’s skiing and bring it to more people.”
Gu is the only female skier competing in all three freestyle events: slopestyle, big air and halfpipe, and she’s already won more medals in those event than any freeskier ever (five). After qualifying for big air finals Sunday night, she criticized a scheduling conflict that will cause her to miss one of her three-hour training sessions for the halfpipe, calling it “really unfair and difficult for me to deal with.”
She responded Monday night by landing a left double-cork 1260 with a toxic grab on her final jump to soar from sixth to second, winning silver. “Oh my god!” Gu screamed as her skis skidded down the slope.
Astonishingly, she hadn’t competed in big air once since winning gold in the event four years ago. She’ll have one final shot at gold Saturday night in the halfpipe.
The “big rivalry,” as Switzerland’s Gremaud called it, drives the top female freeskiers in the world to continue pushing their limits. Still, Gremaud said they are not that close, describing Gu as someone who is “more doing her thing,” a characteristic noted by other competitors.
There is, however, a clear mutual respect. After 18-year-old Italian Flora Tabanelli won bronze on her home soil in her Olympic debut Monday night, Gu hugged her. “She encourages us and we encourage her,” said another freeskier, France’s Kim Dumont Zanella.
For Gu, the storm isn’t going anywhere, not anytime soon. In a telling moment last week, she was asked about the juxtaposition of it all, about how she desperately wants to inspire young girls all the while she’s doing things — soaring, spinning, flipping through the air on a pair skis — that remain so unrelatable to so many.
“It’s only unrelatable because I got good at them,” she said. “Everybody has passions, goals and dreams.”
She veered off topic a bit before hammering home her point.
“Especially for young people, don’t wait until you’re older,” Gu said. “Don’t wait until tomorrow. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now … create your own pond. It’s not about fitting into existing molds. It’s not about being the best at things that exist. Create your own reality.”
As much as any athlete on the planet, Gu has. And she seems content with the perception — and perks — that come with that.