How Eileen Gu Keeps So Cool

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.

Photo: Lorenz Richard/Red Bull