Gu makes X Games history with 3-medal debut

Superstar-in-the-making Eileen Gu soared to global prominence with a breakthrough performance over the weekend, and now the freestyle skiing sensation is on a mission to spearhead China's winter sports push.

Gu, who was born in California, became the first Chinese athlete to triumph at the prestigious Winter X Games by winning the women's ski Superpipe gold on Aspen's Buttermilk Mountain in Colorado on Friday.

The 17-year-old, who also goes by her Chinese name Gu Ailing, underlined her gigantic talent by adding the slopestyle gold on Saturday. She also won the bronze medal in Friday's Big Air competition, with her medal haul unrivaled for an X Games debutant in the event's 25-year history.

Both on the course and in a wider context, Gu's timing could not have been better, with achieving her historic triumphs just as Beijing prepares to kick off the one-year countdown to the 2022 Winter Olympics this week.

"Some people retire with 10 gold medals, and then they're 30 years old and don't know what to do," said Gu, who has a Chinese mother and an American father.

"But I want to be able to have those medals and to be able to feel like I've changed someone's life or changed the sport, or introduced the sport to a country where it wasn't there before."

Having nailed the superpipe, or the halfpipe, gold by executing stunning 900 tricks－two-and-a-half full rotations－in both directions, Gu fended off two-time X Games champion Cassie Sharpe who took silver, and defending silver medalist Rachael Karker who claimed bronze.

In the slopestyle final, Gu was aided by the withdrawal of Estonian defending champion Kelly Sildaru, but the Chinese star's stamina to reach the top of the podium again just 24 hours after her first win was truly remarkable.

Expectations are inevitably high that Gu can repeat this same feat in the mountains surrounding Beijing at next year's Olympics.

"This is something I wouldn't even dare to dream of. I came into this contest with a goal of getting one podium, and I thought that was ambitious," said Gu after the slopestyle win.

"It's really just the adrenaline of my first X Games and being so hyped to be here that it was able to get me through. I probably am going to go hibernate for 24 hours straight now and not talk to anybody because I'm exhausted now. But I couldn't be happier."

Gu is not just a high achiever on the snow. Born and raised in San Francisco, she is an accomplished piano player, an avid runner, speaks fluent Mandarin and graduated from the prestigious San Francisco University High School in just three years so she could focus on her skiing. Boasting an exceptional SAT score of 1,580 out of a possible 1,600, she is enrolled at Stanford University, where she is due to start her studies in the fall of next year.

Gu admitted that she had to make plenty of sacrifices to balance all that with being a teenager, especially in San Francisco where skiing is not exactly the norm among her teenage friends.

"They would pretty much be, 'Skiing, OK, whatever,'" she said of the response from her friends when turning down social invitations to go for training. "I think a lot of them still think I'm a ski racer, not in freestyle."

Despite missing out on the many social events, her unchanging love for skiing still kept her focused on excelling in the sport. The frequent trips to California's Northstar ski resort as an 8-year-old sparked Gu's love affair with the snow.

As her talent developed, she soon found herself competing mostly against the boys.

"It wasn't until I was 14 that I had any female ski friends who were my level," she said. "So, I was constantly thinking, 'Do I have to prove myself? I'm the only girl here. Do I have to do a bigger trick? Do I have to make myself seem better so people won't laugh at women's skiing?'"

Gu is now firmly focused on having the last laugh at next year's Olympics, with her rising profile sure to greatly help with the Chinese government's aim of getting 300 million people involved in ice and snow sports in the buildup to the Games.

"She looked around and said, 'There are so many brilliant role models in the US already,'" said Tom Yaps, Gu's agent, of her decision to compete for China in January 2019. "And she felt her voice could really make an impact over there."

Gu completed the naturalization process in June 2019, and is even keen to extend her influence to the diplomatic sphere. Yaps revealed that she recently received a request to appear in a video for a summit about improving China-United States relations. "Things like that are literally the reason she's doing this," he said.

Asked what her message to the world would be as the one-year countdown begins on her Olympic bid, Gu said she would love to inspire children in China to follow their own dreams on the slopes.

"All of us were little girls surrounded for the first time by people we were scared of in the beginning," she said. "But I just want to see more people out there."

jamesboylan@chinadaily.com.cn