At the top of the hill before her last run in the Milano Cortina women’s freestyle big air final, Eileen Gu, 22, stared intently into the dazzling void. Her task, at its simplest, was this: She needed a strong score to medal, and an exceptional mark for gold. She dropped in.
Off the lip, Gu launched into a left-side double cork 1260—a maneuver that slices through space, dragonfly-sharp, and that she’d learned only the week before—reaching back to grab the outside of her right ski and holding it deep into her rotations. She traveled through the air with the ultra-clean, efficient athleticism she’s known for, landing backwards. Then, she let out an elated, “What the heck?!”
Gu waited patiently for her score: 89.00. The number propelled her to the silver medal position, which she animatedly celebrated; she had not competed in the discipline since Beijing four years ago (there, at just 18, she’d taken gold). As the contest wrapped, Gu hugged her sizable contingency of fans, her mother Yan, the gold medal winner Megan Oldham of Canada, and even Thomas Bach, the former International Olympic Committee president, who was cheering her on from the stands.
When we spoke a few days before the Games began, Gu told me: “For this Olympics, the only thing I can hope is to land runs that I feel proud of.”
Gu, who was born in San Francisco but who competes for China, where her mother is from, is a five-time medalist in freestyle skiing. This tally makes her the most decorated of any woman in the discipline’s history. Along with her Beijing big air gold, she collected a halfpipe gold and slopestyle silver in China. In Italy, she earned silver in slopestyle.
One would think that, given her results in Beijing, Gu would be less nervy going into Milano Cortina. That was probably true to some degree, but she spoke to me with so much confidence and clarity that I wondered if she’s ever gotten nervous.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really felt the external pressure. Even in China, the one thing I was thinking about outside of performing was hoping to inspire someone else to start skiing,” Gu said. “It’s funny, I remember the announcer, before I dropped into big air, he was speaking twice—first in Mandarin, then in English. So I had to hear it twice: ‘Eileen Gu, what will she do? Where will she land? Hundreds of million of people on the live broadcast now…’ I just thought, Oh my gosh, OK, I am going to turn up my music.”
Gu’s particular form of discipline is driven by a mix of methodology, analysis, and psychology, all underscored by the reverb of possibility (that brand-new medal-winning trick in big air being the most recent example). It’s Gu’s own algorithm, and it clearly works. “Many people in the finals of an event can win it. But the people who stay on the podium, there’s a reason for that. I try to keep this in the back of my mind: nervous energy and excitement are the same biochemical in your brain. You just have to tell yourself which one it is.”
Gu half-joked that her three favorite things in life are skiing, school, and fashion. She’s a senior at Stanford, majoring in international relations (she took the current academic year off to train for Milano Cortina). Her partnerships range, or have ranged, from Red Bull to Louis Vuitton to Luckin Coffee to Tiffany Co. She is also a model, signed with IMG. “Fashion keeps me in touch with my femininity,” she explained. “Growing up in a male-dominated sport, I didn’t realize being treated equally as a girl was even an option until I discovered the fashion industry.” She added: “I think you can be really powerful and really feminine at the same time.”
When we spoke, the spring 2026 couture shows had recently ended, and while Gu didn’t want to pick favorites, she did have some feedback. “I thought Chanel was so fascinating. It was really wearable for couture. Did you see the diaphanous trousers that were meant to look like jeans, but were much lighter? I thought those were really beautiful. And Jonathan [Anderson] at Dior, his debut… it was really good, it was an interesting show. Almost kind of opposites, in a lot of ways. I have so many thoughts.”
Gu went on: “When I’m on set, in my fashion headspace, my body is recovering from training. When I’m at school, my mind is working and my body is recovering. When I’m skiing, maybe my mind is recovering. I kind of use each one as rest from the other. I think of it almost like background tasks running—something on your computer that’s always going. That’s kind of how it feels, so I’m always doing something productive.”
Gu has one more event in Milano Cortina: the freeski halfpipe. Qualifying begins on Thursday, February 19, and the finals are two days later. Many consider the halfpipe to be Gu’s strongest area, and—she being the sole woman to compete in freestyle’s three disciplines at these Games—the media attention has been intense.
At this stage, however, Gu is used to it—that algorithmic filter in her brain converting intrusions of anxiety into motivation. For 22, her maturity is medal-worthy in itself—and she has plenty of big, open air ahead.
“I worried for a while that maybe I peaked at 18,” Gu said. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”