Ailing Eileen Gu of China after her second run in the Women’s Freeski Halfpipe qualifier at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games in Italy last Friday. Photo / Photosport
She is the US$23 million star of the Winter Olympics who represents China but has come to feel like a “political punchbag” in her homeland, the United States.
Eileen Gu underlined her status as the greatest freestyle skier in history yesterday when she won the women’s halfpipe in Livigno ahead of Britain’s Zoe Atkin to collect her third medal of these games and her sixth in total following another hat-trick in Beijing four years ago.
She was only 18 then, and China fell in love with a teenage athlete who became known as the “snow princess” and was featured that year among Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Gu, who was born in San Francisco and brought up by her Chinese single mother Yan Gu, has found herself caught up in a very public controversy over her decision in 2019 to switch sporting allegiance to China. She has said that when she is in the US, where she is on sabbatical from her studies at Stanford University, ”I’m American” but that when she is in China, where she spent many summers in Beijing and is fluent in Mandarin, “I’m Chinese”.
“Sometimes it feels like I’m carrying the weight of two countries on my shoulders,” Gu said earlier in the 2026 games, saying she had “gone through some things as a 22-year-old that I really think no one should ever have to endure ever”.
Her choice of sporting allegiance had been brought into sharp focus by the US Vice-President JD Vance during an interview with Fox News.
“I certainly think that someone who grew up in the United States of America who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that makes this country a great place, I would hope they want to compete with the United States of America,” he said.
Gu has also been criticised on social media by Republican senators Rick Scott and Andy Ogles, while Tucker Carlson has previously described her choice as “dumb”. She says she was once physically assaulted at the Stanford University campus and has received death threats.
Asked in Italy whether she felt like a “punching bag for a certain strand of American politics,” she told USA Today: “I do. So many athletes compete for a different country. People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity.
“And also, because I win. If I wasn’t doing well, I think that they probably wouldn’t care as much, and that’s okay. People are entitled to their opinions.”
There was also an entertaining if pointed exchange when, having begun the games with silver medals in the slopestyle and big air events, Gu was asked if they felt like medals gained or golds lost.
“I’m the most decorated female free skier in history. I think that’s an answer in and of itself,” she said, smiling. “How do I say this? Winning a medal at the Olympics is a life-changing experience for every athlete. So, the two medals lost situation, to be quite frank with you, I think, is kind of a ridiculous perspective to take. I’m showcasing my best skiing. I’m doing things that quite literally have never been done before, and so I think that is more than good enough … but thank you.”
Yesterday’s gold would provide a further addition to that answer.
Before the Olympics, Gu had posted photographs of her diaries that included the entry: “I cry several times a week – tears borne of joy and despair alike – I work diligently and passionately. I focus, single-mindedly. I am, I think, truly alive.”
Her connection to fans both in the United States and Asia is undoubted. She has 2.9 million followers on Instagram but more than seven million on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. It is an appeal, then, that is perhaps unique for being so genuinely transcendent.
Gu was also an eye-catching inclusion in 2025 among Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid female athletes. It was headed by three tennis players, Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, but Gu was fourth on US$23.1m ($38.6m) despite earnings of just US$100,000 in actual prizemoney. The next-highest Winter Olympics athlete was the iconic skier Lindsey Vonn in 18th, some US$15m behind Gu.
An IMG model, Gu has worked for Victoria’s Secret and Louis Vuitton. She also did a swimwear cover shoot for Sports Illustrated last year. Her blue-chip sponsors straddle markets in China and the West and include Porsche, Red Bull, IWC Schaffhausen, Anta Sports, TCL Electronics, Bosideng jackets and Mengniu Dairy. She is also outstanding academically; as well as Stanford, where she has studied quantum physics, she spent a term at the University of Oxford and apparently scored a phenomenal score in her SATs at the San Francisco University High School.
After receiving her gold medal and hearing the Chinese national anthem play out at Livigno Snow Park, she held court yesterday with journalists. Describing the two weeks of Olympic competition, Gu said that it had been “a marathon … at the pace of a 100m dash”.
Having expressed hope that her performances would further inspire people, she also revealed that she had been informed since winning gold of her maternal grandmother’s death.
“She was so strong, she was a fighter … a lot of people just cruise through life but she was a steamship,” Gu said. “This woman commanded life and she grabbed it by the reins and she made it into what she wanted it to be and she inspired me so much.
“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 promise her that I was going to win but I did promise her that I was going to be brave like she has. I’m not afraid to try. I take big risks.”
There was also a veiled message to her critics. “I just encourage people to use that energy and direct it to something that makes the world better in their own way,” she said. “I think I’m making the most amount of good with the powers that I have as a 22-year-old athlete. If people disagree with me, if they have other skillsets, which I’m sure they do, then I encourage them to direct it elsewhere and to make the world better in their own way.
“I walk away as the most decorated free skier of all time, male or female, and the most gold medals of any free skier ever, male or female. I look back on quite literally decades of hard work, of pouring my heart and soul into this sport. That is something that I’m so, so proud of.”
And how might she celebrate? “It’s fashion week in Milan,” she said. “I’m really excited to just explore some other avenues, be creative and put that in juxtaposition with skiing and sports. I think that they can coexist so beautifully.”
– Telegraph
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