BEIJING — Standing atop the big air ramp here at Shougang before her third and final run, 18-year-old Eileen Gu rocked to her left one, two, three, several times. She blew a kiss.
Then she turned, pointed her skis at the ramp and threw down.
The Winter Olympics will never be the same. Winter sport in this country of 1.4 billion people will never be the same. In a Games marked by Covid and so much more, here was — joy. Here was the arrival of a personality the likes of which the Olympics, indeed worldwide sport, has not seen since perhaps Kobe Bryant, an international figure able to transcend boundaries. And, moreover — a young woman. The future.
Gu elegantly landed a trick, one she had never called in competition before, called a left double cork 1620. To translate the snowboard jargon: four-and-a-half horizontal rotations and two flips. It won her gold.
Eileen Gu winning the big air event // Getty Images
“It’s the biggest honor, the biggest dream to win gold here today,” Gu would say later at a news conference, “especially in front of this amazing crowd — which I know is not easy to have here at the ‘Covid Olympics.’”
Seemingly always in the moment, possessed of a remarkable presence — she graduated only recently from San Francisco University High School, and in just three years — the American-born Gu also said, “I’m so grateful to China for everything they’ve done for this event. I think that this is a monumental event.”
In so many ways and on so many levels.
To start with the basics:
Gu is China’s first gold medalist in freestyle skiing. Some 300 million people in China have gotten into winter sports because of the 2022 Winter Games. Now — a gold medalist in a very cool discipline.
Like Shaun White’s dramatic last ride in the Vancouver halfpipe 12 years ago, alternately dubbed the Tomahawk or the double McTwist 1260, the third run not only elevated Gu, it elevated the sport, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. More action sports talk: just as with White 12 years ago, what Gu and the other women, especially the French silver medalist Tess Ledeux, did Tuesday is called “progression.” Or, in the apt words of the culture, from Tuesday’s bronze medalist Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland, “It ended up being the sickest event that there ever was in women’s big air.”
It also ended up being one of the sweetest. Gu’s final run earned 94.5 points. That pushed her just ahead of Ledeux in the overall score, 188.25 to 187.5. After Ledeux’s final run, a trick called a switch left double cork 1440 Japan — she landed on one ski — both Gu and Gremaud ran to embrace Ledeux, on the ground in tears. Insiders knew at least some of the reason why. Ledeux’s father died 13 months ago, and she had said a couple of months later on Instagram in a post dedicated to her “Papou”: “I will live and ski with you in my heart for the rest of my life.”
At the news conference later, Ledeux, asked about her father, said, “I have too many emotions.” And she wiped away more tears.
She also said, referring to the progression that the sport witnessed Tuesday, “We’ve made a leap.”
Ledeux had vaulted into the lead by throwing the double 1620 on her first run. Should she have saved it for third? Did it push Gu to what the best of Olympic excellence is supposed to be all about? “My strategy,” Ledeux said, “was to do the best I could and deliver 100%. Today, I was at 100% and I have never skied so well in all my life so I have no regrets. Regret serves nothing. I gave the best that I had and I am proud of that.
“I’m a bit disappointed for sure but I am so, so stoked to grab the second place.”
Gu and Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud consoling France’s Tess Ledeux // Getty Images
Gu said at that news conference, “I think women’s skiing is improving exponentially right now.” She added a moment later, “Maybe a little girl at home can look on TV and see these girls on TV and that’s her first time hearing about freeskiing and I think that’s so different, to hear about freeskiing from a girl than to hear about it from a middle-aged man, because representation is so important, especially in women’s sports, and so if we want to make progress in that form we just have to represent ourselves well, and I think we are representing ourselves really well right now, and I am really, really proud of all the girls in the field today.”
Earlier, she had told a German reporter — he put this on Twitter — that before the third run she had discussed with her mother, Yan, what would prove to be the winning 1620: “She’s, like, ‘Don’t do it, you should do a trick you’ve already done before. Get a silver medal and be happy.’ I was, like, ‘No. Vetoed!’”
At the news conference, she elaborated, and to listen to her is to get a sense of the Olympic ideal — the melding of athletic ability with art, culture, political skill and a tenacious, ferocious, consuming will to pursue excellence:
“I have never done [the 1620] before. I actually felt pretty confident going into it. I played piano for nine years. So I am very attuned to the sense of rhythm. And I think of all my tricks as a rhythm, and music, and, like, kind of motion. So, in that sense, the wind in my ears, the speed of my turn when I wrap the spin — it speeds up and, so, like, there’s a change in tempo. And, so, I was visualizing that, I was thinking about that going into the trick.
“I felt very confident that if I didn’t land it, it would be safe and that I would still be able to participate in my next two events. But more than anything, I thought that it was an opportunity to represent myself and this message that I’ve always had, of breaking your own boundaries. So no matter if I landed it or not, it was — I’d feel like a testament to my character, and that is something I wanted to show the world.”
A note here for Olympic diehards: Gu won three medals, two gold, at the 2020 Youth Olympic Winter Games in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her gold Tuesday may yet go a long way toward validating the Youth Games concept, a project many Olympic insiders find a considerable challenge.
If Gu was not already the face of these Beijing Games — born and schooled in America, maybe 25-33% of time growing up with her grandmother in Beijing, for the past three years representing China in international events, understanding with her mother that winning would almost surely have so much more impact in China than in Mammoth or Lake Placid or Deer Valley — she assuredly is now.
In the immediate aftermath of her gold-medal run, on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, six of the top 10 trending topics were Gu Ailing, her name in Chinese.
If you think China is a place where everything is reserved and monotonous, try this from a commentator on state TV as Gu stepped to the top of the podium: “She used her action to demonstrate confident Chinese people are the most beautiful!”
As for that most beautiful thing: Gu is also a fashion model. Ads featuring her are a regular here. Sponsors include Red Bull and the Bank of China.
Is it really any wonder why she switched affiliations three years ago?
As she said in Tuesday’s afterglow, asked about her victory, “I hope it sends out a message and I hope that I’m able to use this platform to inspire more young girls to take part in freeskiing.”
At these Games, there are 2,902 athletes from 91 national Olympic committees; 1,315 are female. That’s 45 percent; That’s both a record number and a record percentage of female athletes at a Winter Games — taking part in a record number of women’s events, 46.
“That’s always been my biggest goal since Day One,” Gu continued. “My message has been the same forever. It’s just a bigger platform and more voices hearing me.”
If anyone can maneuver the delicate space between China and the United States, it would seem to be Eileen Gu — she is the 2022 answer, the successor, to Kobe.
In 2008, he was everywhere at the Beijing Games — a man not only without boundaries but without limits. American, Italian, Chinese — everyone, everywhere, captivated.
In 2022 — she is the same.
IOC president Thomas Bach, who had a front-row seat for Gu’s winning 1620, gives her congratulations // Getty Images
Tennis star Peng Shuai at big air // Getty Images
It’s often reported that she got a 1580, out of 1600, on the SAT; she’s due to enroll at Stanford. When reporters sought Tuesday to play elementary school-style gotcha about matters of citizenship, she responded with a master class in big-picture eye-on-the-prize.
“I definitely feel as though I am just as American as I am Chinese. I’m American when I’m in the U.S. and I am Chinese when I’m in China. I have been very outspoken about my gratitude to both the U.S. and China for making me the person that I am. I don’t feel as though I am, you know, taking advantage of one or the other because both have actually been incredibly supportive of me, and continue to be supportive of me because they understand that my mission is to use sport as a force for unity, to use it as a form to foster interconnection between countries and not use it as a divisive force. That benefits everyone. If you disagree with that, that’s someone else’s problem.”
A few minutes later, another reporter, how hard is it to balance keeping people in both the United States and China happy?
“Absolutely. Thank you for that question,” she began, just the way practiced professionals do. Again, she is 18.
"I think that — here’s the thing I’m not trying to keep anyone happy. I’m an 18-year-old girl out here living my best life. Like, I’m having a great time.
"It doesn’t matter if other people are happy or not. Because I feel as though I am doing my best. I'm enjoying the entire process and I’m using my voice to create as much positive change as I can for the voices who will listen to me in an area that is personal and relevant to myself.
“So I know that I have a good heart and I know that my reasons for making the decisions I do are based on a greater common interest, and something that I feel like is for the greater good. And so if other people don’t really believe that that’s where I’m coming from, then that just reflects that they do not have the empathy to empathize with a good heart, perhaps because they don't share the same kind of morals that I do. In that sense, I’m not going to waste my time trying to placate people who are, one, uneducated and, two, probably are never going to experience the kind of joy and gratitude and just love that I have the great fortune to experience on a daily basis.
“So, yeah, if people don’t believe me and people don’t like me, that’s their loss. They’re never going to win the Olympics. So.”
After Monday’s qualifying rounds, Gu had put it more simply. She said she understands that this, that she, is all about something way more than, you know, air. It’s about that Olympic ideal, and the notion that things don’t need, especially in this generation, to be binary, American or Chinese, Chinese or American, that there are many ways, now, to be — to “feel as though I am about something bigger than just skiing and flipping through the air because it’s cool.”
Who was in the front row Tuesday to watch her do her cool thing?
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
Who else was in the stands?
Peng Shuai, the no-longer-disappeared tennis star.
But how did you know this was really a big deal?
Bing Dwen Dwen, the incredibly popular plastic-encased panda mascot of these 2022 Olympics, was on hand.
This was big. And this was air. But so much more. So, so much more.
“… I feel so grateful to be able to feel the joy that I do, participating in the sport every day,” Eileen Gu said.
“I feel, especially as a young person, it’s done so much more than teach me air awareness and how to fall.
“It taught me about resilience. About mental and physical toughness. It built character. I think it has really changed what I am as a person and it has been critical in my developmental success. So, in that sense, I feel as though I want to give other people the same opportunity to have that joy that I do.”