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I'm In Love with Fear

Favorite Quote: chaotic neutral.

Ever since I was born, I fear when someone asks me what is your fear. This is a question that I struggle to answer all the time. During self-introductions, when the teachers ask me, or when I’m filling out surveys, etc. Whenever I think about this question, the only thing that comes up immediately is— death, but it is not something that anyone could avoid. So I’m usually stuck and will answer with an “I don’t know”. However, this all changed after a random day of me going on Instagram and clicking on the link from Eileen Gu’s profile page. It lead me to a New York Times article about Eileen Gu’s skiing career, the article flipped my world upside down.

Eileen Gu is a professional freestyle skier and model. Eileen stated in her article, “ I pursued a tumultuous love affair with fear.” She competed in the 2022 Beijing Olympics and won three medals, two golds and one silver for all of her three sports. I have always looked up to Eileen and I am in love with her bubbly personality. I have been following her for about two years now. I am so confident that she will win that sometimes I don’t even put on the TV. Her job as an extreme athlete is to overcome her fear of losing her head and performing three or four circles in the air.  Even though what it had inspired me could never be as extreme as Eileen’s, it made me think about my relationship with fear. Everyone has something that they are scared of, even if everyone’s fear is different, we all are creatures that get scared by different objects, events, or people. Fear could be a day-to-day object. For example, The Rock claims he is afraid of spiders. Or the fear could be a concept, such as loneliness, even though most people will rank these fears in believing some are not as scary as the other ones, it all results in a person’s heart beating very fast, along with the screaming and shaking. In other words, let’s imagine the concept of fear on a number line from one to ten. Even though spiders, to most people, are like a two to three, and death is like a nine or ten, it's all categorized as fear. After reading Eileen Gu’s article, I feel like it’s important to understand my relationship with fear. Is it a toxic one or a healthy one? Do I become better with my fear, or is fear getting hold of me?

I grew up as my primary school friends will call it a “shekong,” which means that I am the shy one that doesn’t talk to anyone. I admit, it’s true. During my primary school days, I only talked to people I already knew since kindergarten, and when anyone else was around I zipped my mouth. I remember in third grade when my Chinese teacher asked a question, I would raise my hand for one second after she called a classmate to answer. With this strategy, I wouldn’t be called on the teacher since I didn’t want to speak up. We could say that I have a fear of answering questions, which might be a two on the number line, or we could say that I have a fear of change, which for me is a seven. That's the main reason I don't speak up. I am afraid of new places and new people. I get uncomfortable when we have to change teachers and classmates every year and meet new classrooms, new students, and new teachers that I don’t know, so as a coping mechanism, I remained quiet around an unfamiliar environment.

We could say that I am in a toxic relationship with my fear since it is not helping me to become a better person and it stops me from experiencing what the world is supposed to be like. But back then, I didn’t care. I remember in fifth grade when my mom said to me, carefully, that I should talk to people more, I cried and threw a fit saying she destroyed my ego. I felt like nobody understood my point of view of not wanting to change. I thought, “Everything is perfect now, so why should I adapt to new changes?” Even though this was affecting my daily life and I knew it, I still chose to remain the same without at least trying to change. It is safe to say that I had a pessimistic mind, and always saw things from a negative point of view.

Then, the COVID-19 lockdown happened. It is safe to say that most people changed during quarantine, whether it was their thoughts, appearances or life choices, etc. but, during the COVID-19 lockdown, I changed completely, from a “shekong” to a “sheniu,” from an introvert to an extrovert, from a shy to an outgoing girl, from a short-spoken to a chatty girl, and from a pessimist to an optimist. When talking to my mom about this now, she says she also doesn’t know how it happened. For me, it’s like magic. Before COVID I didn’t talk in school; after COVID I talk too much. Sometimes, my friends will even joke with me that I got a twin, and my parents changed a kid to go to school. I remember returning to school and participating in group work and contributing to the group. Everyone was shocked, including me. Suddenly, I didn’t feel that nervous when speaking to the rest of my classmates I didn’t know before. Slowly but surely, I started to become the leader of the group projects assigned by the teacher. When my best friend saw how I’ve changed, she loved the new me but she also didn’t know what happened, and what changed me.

Nobody understood what happened, my mom, my dad, my best friend, my teacher, and not even myself. It has been that way for two years now until I saw the article from Eileen Gu. To put it simply, I changed my relationship with fear from a toxic one to a healthy one. I talked to fear about my issues and our relationship is now healthy and a beneficial one.

           When I went to middle school, I grew older, so my thoughts matured. Coincidentally, with the COVID-19 lockdown, I had more time to self-introspect and think about my identity. As I grew older, and as I began to discover my interests in different fields, I realized my passion when I grew up that is to be a sports journalist. A sports journalist can’t be a “shekong” all the time; they have to interview people they have never met before and talk to them professionally. Most importantly, sport journalists has to face changes all the time, different athelete which they needs to interview, different sports venues they have to go to, different match results that doesn’t fit their expectations, etc., and these are all part of being a sports journalist. So even though I never remember having that conversation with my brain before, one day during the lockdown, something must have clicked and I decided to open up and communicate with my fear. I began to have a more optimistic mind and wasn’t afraid of change. Now, I am willing to make new friends and talk to new people. Also, I try to see the positive side of things.

           In this recent school year, it is a requirement for our school’s freshmen to live on campus, and I got assigned to a roommate who I feel is a shadow of the me before. She is super shy and doesn’t like to talk much; however, with me being all happy and excited by her side, she is slowly becoming outgoing as well. When I was a primary school student, I never thought that I could influence other people positively and even make them have a positive relationship with their fears as well. I also made it a life goal to always be like a pistachio, also known as the “happy nut” in China, and try to do my best in spreading positivity. The world is so busy nowadays, and we all lack positivity in our lives. All of these are pleasant surprises, and I am genuinely thrilled about how my relationship with my fear came to be. This experience also made me realize how valuable it is to help someone discover their relationship with fear.

           As most motivated adolescents are, we all want to be better. This is the key. For me, this is what drives us to face our fears, we want to become a better person. Everyone has their fears, and everyone will be asked the question what is your fear? But in reality, the more important question is what is your relationship with fear, and how do you change your relationship with fear. For me, my fear is Change, and even though I have a healthy relationship with it now, a relationship with fear needs maintenance, just like a normal relationship. As for me, I will be experiencing a new change in my life soon. I will be moving to New York Long Island and transferring to a new public school. This is a huge change because I have been in my school for eight years, since I was in second grade. If it was the old me, I would be begging and crying to my parents about not switching schools and moving to a new country. Fortunately, thanks to Eileen Gu’s wise words, I perceive this as an opportunity to try out new things and meet new people.

            So, remember, fear is something that cannot be conquered or overcome; however, we do have the ability to change how we view it and our relationship with it. From knowing this, it could benefit you forever.

The Beijing 2022 Olympics has inspired me to write this piece. As a Chinese, when I saw Eileen compete at the Olympics, I immediately took a liking to her. This resulted in me reading articles about her which inspired me to write this piece! Hope you like it!

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Favorite Quote: thoes who fall shall rise:)

Favorite Quote: "He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future." ~Francisco de Quevedo "You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart." ~W.H. Auden

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Olympic gold medalist eileen gu on embracing fear and changing the game   .

The night before Eileen Gu spoke to an audience of CEOs at YPO ’s EDGE, she finished her Stanford University class in Palo Alto, California, USA at 8:30 p.m. — she is currently taking classes in both International Relations and Quantum Physics — before flying to New York City. The next day she had a photo shoot for a fashion magazine lined up and was then flying back to California for two days of ski training before her first class on Monday. She also had to finish a 12-page midterm before the weekend was over.  

It’s a slightly daunting schedule, but fairly typical for the 19-year-old. Not shy of a challenge, Gu became the youngest freeskiing Olympic medalist during the 2022 Beijing games, winning gold medals in big air and half pipe and a silver in slopestyle. Her sport requires her to perform elaborate tricks, flips and twists in the air. Understanding how her mind works and recognizing and quantifying her fear in a meaningful way allows her to make informed decisions she says, and has been essential to embracing fear in her sport and in life.  

I think it’s important to both do well and do good, To have a purpose greater than what you pursue, and to find meaningful work within that for yourself and for the community around you globally. ” — Olympic medalist Eileen Gu share

“It’s biologically counterintuitive to make yourself do something physically dangerous, right? I’m going to feel nervous no matter how well prepared I am. But that sense of discomfort can be found in every walk of life. It’s knowing when to push and when to stop. That can save your life, and it can be the difference between an Olympic gold medal or not.” 

During the Olympic finals for big air, she was sitting in third place after already performing her two best tricks. To grab the gold, she’d need to pull off something big, like a double cork 1620 (a four-and-a-half rotation trick). This was a huge leap in difficulty, and she’d never practiced it. Still, she decided to go for it.  

“There was this little voice in the back of my head telling me I had this immense opportunity in my hands and this immense platform to do something great with it … if I didn’t try, I’d regret it far more. It’s much worse to not try than to fall,” she says.  

A multi-faceted generation  

Gu takes her role as a globally recognized athlete seriously. For instance, despite being U.S.-born and trained, she decided to represent China in the 2022 games because she felt she could have a bigger impact in building up the sport, especially among girls.  

“I think it’s important to both do well and do good,” she says. “To have a purpose greater than what you pursue, and to find meaningful work within that for yourself and for the community around you globally.”  

For Gu, sports are a shared human experience where people can see beyond nationality, gender, age and culture to connect, inspire and celebrate innovation together.  

And while she says 99% of the messages she receives on social media are positive notes of thanks and encouragement, like most famous people, especially famous teens, she receives messages of criticism and even hate messages. Despite her youth, she has a mature way of looking at the negativity.  

“Some people are not the people you’re trying to talk to, especially when you are someone that they don’t know, because it’s very easy for them to project their own thoughts onto you like a mirror. In that sense, there’s nothing I can do,” she says. “What I can do is spread positivity, teach people about things that I love, share joy and uplift those who are willing to be uplifted.” 

As evidenced by her packed schedule, she sees no issue in continuing her pursuit of varying interests — a trait she shares with fellow Gen Zers.  

“[We’re] multifaceted and willing to explore different aspects of [our] identities in tandem instead of fitting into these boxes that society has made for [us] already,” she says. “So why not? Why not be a skier and a model and a student? Why not enjoy physics and international relations and art history and be a food connoisseur and all these things that I love? The world is our oyster.” 

Eileen Gu addressed business leaders at EDGE, YPO’s premier annual event and the largest gathering of CEOs in the world. For three days in New York City, more than 2,500 chief executives from 80 countries gather with influential thought leaders and experts to learn about and discuss critical topics in business and beyond. EDGE fosters a culture of trust, respect and inclusivity, where global leaders emerge with solutions to drive change and help shape our collective future. YPO EDGE returns to New York City in 2023 and 2024 and is open to all YPO members.  Learn more about EDGE

 Interested in joining this dynamic group of global leaders?  Explore YPO membership here  

By Mary Mack

Mary Mack is a writer and digital content strategist. She earned her news-editorial journalism degree from the University of Illinois…

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Eileen Gu: Competing has ‘taught me how to cope with fear,’ says Chinese freestyle skiing star

Eileen Gu knows what it’s like to stand on her own. Whether it be at the top of a skiing course before a run or as the trailblazing figure she is, Gu’s blossoming career is a testament to her resilience.

And her next mountain to climb is the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Gangwon, South Korea – which begin this Friday – with an eye firmly set on the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy .

Representing China , Gu became the youngest-ever Olympic champion in freestyle skiing at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 at just 18, but it was in Lausanne – at the Winter YOG 2020 – where her rise to stardom truly gathered momentum.

Gu picked up gold in both the Big Air and Halfpipe events, as well as silver in the Slopestyle, before matching that record two years later in Beijing. Her exploits, both on and off the slopes, led to her recently being named the Global Ambassador for Gangwon 2024.

“It really is the only event where athletes from different sports will come together and compete under the five rings and really have this sense of unity, of crossover, of sportsmanship and friendship – especially with people your age,” the 20-year-old Gu told CNN Sport .

“It really is a formative experience and is something that kind of stokes the spark in you, hopefully for the Olympics in two years.”

Gu’s journey from the YOG to Olympic champion is nothing short of remarkable, especially for an athlete at the very beginning of their career with so much, both in the world of sport and outside of it, to contend with.

Gu hasn’t just excelled on the slopes; graduating from high school a year early, she was admitted to Stanford University, and somehow finds a way to balance competing and studying. So, along with aims for triumphs in World Cups in Switzerland and Canada , the phenom hopes for parallel success in her academic performance in 2024.

“I think that athletics have enriched my life to such a profound degree, not only in terms of my physical well-being, but also my mental and my spiritual well-being,” said Gu.

“It’s taught me how to cope with fear. It’s definitely taught me hard lessons, but lessons that I really wouldn’t be able to learn elsewhere about resilience, about sportsmanship. And that’s something that can transcend any kind of barrier: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.

“That’s why the Youth Olympics are so valuable. Because no matter where you’re from or what sport you’re in, you’re a similar age, you’re [from a] similar background. Everybody is at the top of their craft, and being able to share that experience is something that’s really unforgettable.”

After 11 months without competition in 2023 due to injury, Gu took time to focus on her studies before winning back-to-back World Cups in December; it was like she never left.

So what’s the secret to the double Olympic champion’s success?

“I’m kind of notorious in training because I train like there’s no tomorrow,” said Gu. “I’ll be lapping people in training, I’ll do my full run like three runs in because that’s, I know, the way that I work,” she said.

“I always say that competing is 50% skill and 50% enduring pressure. Learning strategies to best cope with that … it’s an area where there’s not a ton of research.

“I just see all my friends as professional athletes, and so in that sense, I just have the best data set in the world.”

In November last year, CNN reported that elite women’s sport will generate revenue of $1.28 billion in 2024 according to financial analysts Deloitte, which is a 300% increase from three years ago.

In her early years as an athlete, though, Gu said she felt the pressure of an entire community on her shoulders due to the scarcity of young girls competing in the terrain park.

“I definitely feel like I had to represent this entire community, which is not fair to ask of a 10-year-old – it’s not fair to ask of anyone,” she said.

“One thing that I still do notice is sitting on a chairlift and hearing: ‘Gosh, [with] that trick, I was skiing like a girl’ or ‘Stop being a little girl.’”

“Those kind of comments definitely jab at me. But I do notice that people keep their mouth shut around me now, but I think that’s not really fair. Why do you have to earn the respect of people just because you’re a girl?”

To quell that sentiment, Gu utilizes the 1.9 million-strong army of followers she has on Instagram, as well as other social media platforms, to talk about representation in the hope of inspiring the next generation budding athletes.

“What I try to do is use my platform loudly and unapologetically. I think that representation is key, and I also think that there is a duty for everybody in the sport to make it as welcoming and accessible as possible for everybody.”

Even though she won’t be competing in the Paris Olympics later this year, Gu speaks about the event as if she was; there’ll be four new categories at Paris 2024, including breakdancing, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing.

With new sports comes new fans – and also the possibility of new athletes.

“I think that it has this invigorating, infectious energy that you don’t really have to be an athlete, per se, to be able to participate in,” Gu said, smiling.

“I always say, hopefully, there’s one girl sitting in front of her TV screen at home thinking: ‘If she looks like me and she talks like me and she can do that, then maybe I want to give it a try.’”

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The American-born free skier’s decision to compete for China has stoked several controversies.

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With her medal-winning freeskiing and can-do spirit, American-born Chinese free skier Eileen Gu has dominated the media’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics. But that global fascination has also been ignited by a streak of controversy.

Questions of Gu’s citizenship, her decision to compete for China and silence regarding China ’s human rights violations has stoked some of the interest in the high-flying athlete. Born and raised in California, Gu, whose mother is Chinese and father is American, announced she would compete for China at the Winter Games in 2019. That decision and her subsequent performance have resulted in glory and multimillion endorsement deals. Her 20-plus sponsors have helped her rack up a reported $42 million-plus in earnings since January 2021, according to the news agency Tianxiashangwang.

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With a gold medal in Big Air and a silver in Slopestyle, the 18-year-old aims to add a third medal in the Halfpipe. Win or lose, major brands are locked in with Gu, whose worldwide appeal eclipses the influential American and Chinese markets. But several of her endorsers declined to comment about the controversy around her at the Winter Games. After qualifying for the Halfpipe finals Thursday, Gu told the media, “People sometimes don’t know what to do with other people when they’re not fitting into a box. They say, ‘Is she Chinese? Is she American? Is she a model ? Is she a student? Why is she trying to change the world when she’s only 18?’”

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Gu, who reportedly became a Chinese national at 15, has said repeatedly that inspiring children and women to participate in winter sports, is her objective. She told the media Thursday, “I’m not trying to solve political problems right now. And I’m aware that I’m not able to do everything I want to do in this exact moment.”

Executives at Oakley, Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton declined to comment when asked to address Gu’s decision to compete for China, the question of Gu’s citizenship and her not addressing the allegations of China’s human rights abuses. Nor, did they comment about how Gu’s Olympic success may have impacted site traffic and sales at their respective companies.

Given the diplomatic boycott by the U.S. and its view of China’s mass detention and re-education program aimed at Uyghur Muslims being genocidal, Gu’s endorsers are in a precarious place. Separately, many brands rely on factories in China for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of production for consumer goods.

Asked about the apparent silent strategy by Gu’s sponsors, Richard Sheehan, professor emeritus of finance at the University of Notre Dame, noted the backlash and potential boycott that the National Basketball Association faced after Houston Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests in 2019. Referring to the apparent silent approach by Gu’s sponsors, Sheehan said, “The safest thing for any of the sponsors to do is to basically do nothing. It shows that when it comes to profits or Uyghur genocide, they’ll take the quiet road. If they say something supportive, they’re going to lose a lot in China and they’re not going to gain a lot in the U.S. If they don’t say a lot, they’ll lose a little bit in the U.S., but perhaps gain a lot in China.”

He added, “Just looking at the risk-reward ratio, I would be very much surprised if you get any word out of any of her sponsors. It’s not a smart strategy. I think it’s reprehensible, but I’m not their audience.”

Executives at some of the other companies that Gu endorses, Victoria’s Secret, Estée Lauder , Red Bull, Beats by Dre, Kohler, Faction Skis and Anta did not acknowledge multiple media requests. A spokeswoman for the Women’s Sports Foundation also declined comment. Cadillac, which enlisted Gu as a brand ambassador in China last September, was one exception. Stefan Cross, senior manager of product and brand communications a company spokesman, said in a statement, “Cadillac champions big dreams and bold ambitions, and congratulates Eileen on her iconic achievements. We are very proud of Eileen winning the gold medal in the women’s free ski Big Air event.”

As for how Gu’s Olympic success may have spiked Cadillac’s site traffic and sales, Cross indicated “it is too early to try and attribute this achievement to any recent changes in Cadillac business.”

More than 10 years into her freeskiing career, the adrenaline-loving professional is adept at tackling 22-foot halfpipes and landing the double-cork 1440 rotations. Admittedly “in love with fear,” Gu overruled her mother’s advice for her final Big Air run and pulled off a 1620 — four and a half rotations for the first time in competition. Gu spelled out her fear-loving ways in a Feb. 6 New York Times essay, explaining that fear comes down to excitement, uncertainty and pressure. And there is more at stake than just championship wins and keeping existing sponsors happy. Addressing the pressure quotient, Gu wrote, “Expectations of family and friends, a competitive streak or even sponsorship opportunities can provide the scaffolding for a high-pressure environment.”

That said, Gu appears to be a quick study in the branding game, having had the wherewithal to remove her Anta gloves on the medal stand to show off a Tiffany bracelet and four rings and always keeping her Faction skis in the camera frame, when awaiting scores post-runs. NBC, of course, is also all-in with Gu’s megawatt status. The ever-smiling Californian was one of a handful American Olympians that the network banked much of its coverage on, and unlike other favorites like snowboarder Shaun White and downhill skier Mikaela Shiffrin, Gu has delivered athletically. Although NBC has seen some record-low ratings for viewership, NBC Sports is trying to buoy interest with such online posts as “Watch: Eileen Gu Qualifies for Finals, Enjoys a Sandwich While Awaiting Results.”

John Davis, author of “Olympic Games Effect: How Sports Marketing Builds Strong Brands,” noted that athletes competing for different countries other than where they live, were born or have citizenship happens regularly. “What makes her newsworthy today has more to do with the geopolitical landscape,” he said, adding that being one of the world’s best Olympic athletes at the age of 18 are other factors. Davis said he “takes Gu at her word that she chose to compete for China to inspire millions of people in China especially young girls, about sports and focus on the cause of gender equality for athletes. Those are significant issues in their own right, but they do not obligate her to also opine on other geopolitical issues as much as the media and public opinion want her to.”

Davis, chair of Brand New View, speculated that sponsors are staying quiet about the controversies surrounding her so that the attention is on “her sports accomplishments and her optimistic, [and] even inspiring personality.”

”We place outsized expectations on top athletes to be role models, arbiters of public opinion and politically savvy (as long as they agree with our point of view). This is not to excuse the human right abuses in China, as those are clearly of deep concern,” he said. “It is simply to say that Eileen is an athlete first, and a very good one, who has garnered the support of many sports fans and attracted sponsors. She is an ambassador for sport, not politics. That may change in the years ahead, if her international reputation grows, but for now she appears to simply be focused on having a positive public image without touching third-rail issues”

Gu has amassed a digital reach estimated to be hundreds of millions of impressions and views, according to Michael Naraine, assistant professor of sport management at Brock University. “Eileen has a very long runway. Similar to Chloe Kim, she is an Olympic gold medalist at age 18, which opens the door to a bevy of endorsement deals and high-profile activities for the foreseeable future. It also helps that the next Winter Olympic Games are going to be in one of the fashion capitals of the world, Milan, which [could] increase her nonathletic endeavors with fashion modeling,” he said.

The global zeal for Gu is not at all surprising to Naraine, who said athletes that can span multiple nationalities and/or cultures break through the unidimensional mould of just rooting for homeland favorites. In doing so, they captivate multiple audiences, he said.

Noting how other women athletes like Eugenia Bouchard and Anna Kournikova have embraced the high-profile spotlight without reaching the pinnacle of their athletic pursuits, Naraine said Gu has proven that she can do both, which presents “a high-value proposition for sponsors given her global reach.”

As an IMG model and a bilingual athlete, Gu will likely continue to be highly sought-after by brands that want to be associated with prestige and winning, and leverage multiple markets of importance, according to Naraine. Her ability to shoot campaigns in English and Mandarin will spare the need for voiceovers or subtitles and that authenticity will resonate with consumers in those markets, he said.

Gu has also faced scorn on social media after suggesting on Instagram that anyone can download a virtual private network for free on the App Store. Social media apps like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, as well as most Western news sites, are blocked in China.

Sheehan summed up Gu’s statement relating to Instagram and VPNs as misleading and a mistake. “However, the point that most of the criticism has missed is that she’s 18. She may have had some media training and be media savvy, but she’s still a teenager. To get where she is, she may not have a lot of exposure in some dimensions, but she’s likely been extremely limited in her connections in other dimensions. None of that excuses her from making an ignorant statement, but it’s important context that generally has been omitted from reporting.”

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Eileen Gu: Navigating two cultures, judged by both of them

Silver medal winner China’s Eileen Gu celebrates during the venue award ceremony for the women’s slopestyle finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

FILE - Spectators wait for Eileen Gu, of China, during the women’s freestyle skiing big air finals of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

FILE - Gold medalist Eileen Gu of China celebrates during the medal ceremony for the women’s freestyle skiing big air at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

FILE - Eileen Gu, of China, competes during the women’s freestyle skiing big air finals of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

China’s Eileen Gu competes during the women’s slopestyle finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

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BEIJING (AP) — She is an exceptional athlete who has already won medals in the Beijing Olympics. But the fascination — some might say obsession — with Eileen Gu’s origin story has threatened to overshadow anything she does on the slopes.

As the freestyle skier chases gold in the mountains northwest of Beijing, some competing narratives about her have taken hold, from California to China.

Some have the San Francisco native skiing for the Chinese team to secure more lucrative endorsements. In others, she has betrayed the United States, where she was born and grew up, to ski for China, her mother’s native country.

And a third: She was way too young to have made the decision to “abandon” the United States for China, where a single misstep could lead a repressive government to restrict her movement or her speech.

The frenzy to “explain” Gu’s choice reflects biases and misunderstandings in the United States about Asian American identity. The stories about Eileen Gu are as much about the people telling them as they are about the athlete herself.

For her part, the 18-year-old athlete has said repeatedly that she was raised by two strong women — her mother and maternal grandmother — and she wanted to inspire girls in China, where there are few female role models in sports.

She has genuinely strong connections to China, just like many others in the Chinese diaspora who are taking advantage of opportunities and resources both in the Western countries where they grew up and in an increasingly wealthy mainland China.

“What she represents is a new trend,” says Yinan He, an associate professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, “simply because China has become so wealthy and powerful and attractive and generating opportunities not available to immigrants here.”

Gu is particularly well placed to take advantage of these opportunities.

As engineers retired from Chinese government ministries, her grandparents were part of the professional elite. Her mother, Yan Gu, 58, left China in the 1980s to pursue graduate studies in the U.S. and now works as a private investor with a focus on China, according to LinkedIn. Her father has never been publicly identified.

Gu had an upper middle-class upbringing and private school education in the United States, and she says she’s equally comfortable in both countries.

In 2019, according to the IOC, she became a Chinese national, but her full citizenship picture remains unclear. Gu has sidestepped questions about whether she gave up her U.S. passport, and China does not recognize dual citizenship.

Gu has consistently refused to choose one country or the other. As she has written on Instagram, dichotomy is her favorite word. And she told the Olympic Channel in 2020: “When I’m in China, I’m Chinese. When I’m in the U.S., I’m American.”

Many immigrants and their children feel this duality. Few are allowed to live it.

Nonwhite immigrants and their descendants, in particular, face the double bind of being required to completely assimilate in order to be considered American, but also butting up against racist notions that prevent them from being accepted as truly American.

“Part of the Eileen Gu perplexity is that the West is seen as superior and the East is seen as inferior. So why would she want to represent China?” says Russell Jeung, an Asian American Studies professor at San Francisco State University, who has tracked the rise of hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. during the pandemic.

“It’s sort of ironic because in half our cases, people use anti-Chinese rhetoric and are telling us to go back home. They’re telling us, ‘You don’t belong here. We don’t accept you.’ And then this is sort of the opposite: ‘Why aren’t you representing your home?’” he says. “And so we lose either way.”

It turns out that, in a world where elite athletes increasingly cross borders to compete, Gu is not that unusual.

No one thinks twice about a Senegalese winger in the English Premier League or a Japanese pitcher in Major League Baseball. At the Olympics, nation-shopping is fairly common: China’s men’s hockey team in Beijing is primarily made up of North Americans, many of whom had no connection to the country until they were recruited to ensure the home team didn’t get blown out.

Asian American representation at the Olympics has also come a long way.

In 1998, cable news network MSNBC used the headline “American beats out Kwan” to describe Tara Lipinski’s win over Michelle Kwan. Both figure skaters were born in the United States.

Today, Gu is also just one of many Asian Americans whose family immigration tales are on display at the Beijing Olympics.

Nathan Chen, who won a gold for the U.S. in figure skating, was born in Utah to immigrants from China. Snowboarder Chloe Kim, who won her second gold for the U.S. in the women’s halfpipe, was born in California to Korean immigrants. U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu is the daughter of a man who left China in his 20s as a political refugee because he had protested the Communist government.

So what makes Gu the subject of such intense fascination? She is perhaps a perfect storm of elements.

Unlike many athletes who change countries to compete, Gu could have easily skied for the U.S. team — and that perhaps heightens the feeling of betrayal. Her modeling work with global brands from Louis Vuitton to Victoria’s Secret makes her more visible than other athletes.

“She gets a lot of attention because of that, because there is always that focus on femininity and appearance for female athletes,” says Robert Hayashi, a professor at Amherst College who specializes in Asian American history and sports studies.

That fascination is evident from the gross tonnage of social media commentary she attracts in both countries.

A recent Instagram post showing her on the medal stand following her gold medal-winning performance in the Big Air competition garnered 402,000 likes and 51,000 comments. And China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo said its servers were briefly overloaded with adoration for the champion following her win.

But there can be a dark side. Critics in China have chided Gu for failing to use her platform to advocate for internet freedom in a country that tightly restricts access for its citizens. On Tuesday, she largely dodged a reporter’s question about whether she compromised by choosing China, saying she uses her voice as much as she can.

And of course pundits in the U.S. have attacked her for competing for China, often in terms that further the persistent, racist othering of Asian Americans.

“Right now Eileen is a hot commodity in China, and just treated as ‘Chinese’ by the media and many of her fans,” says Rui Ma, founder of the San Francisco-based investment consulting firm Tech Buzz, who immigrated from China to the U.S. as a child in 1989.

“We’ll see if her stance ... will be fully accepted there over the long run,” she says. “It certainly doesn’t seem to be accepted by many Americans at the moment.”

Gu also represents how dramatically migration from China to America has changed.

“The profile of the Chinese population here is qualitatively different from many other immigrant groups,” says Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “They’re highly educated, they work in in-demand jobs and many come with substantial amounts of finances that they invest here.”

While many continue to move to the U.S. for low-wage jobs, they’re increasingly being outpaced by migrants with flexibility and the money to spend summers in China and maintain regular contact with family at home.

They are more likely to be bicultural, openly embracing their heritage unlike earlier generations who were told — and believed — that integration was their ticket to acceptance.

“There are benefits to being Chinese and engaging with China, the country and the culture,” Ma says.

Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and expert on China at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, DC, says Gu’s story shows that the complexities of the globalized world don’t always line up neatly with geopolitical lenses.

“Her story speaks to the benefits, the value, the opportunities that come from an interconnected world,” he says. “Her gold medal may be placed in China’s column. But her success is a global success.”

Har reported from San Francisco. AP News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York, AP writer Joe McDonald in Beijing, and AP National Writer Eddie Pells in Zhangjiakou, China, contributed to this report.

More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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• Let's Move

Ailing (Eileen) Gu: "Outside of skiing I am a huge nerd!"

In an exclusive interview with Olympics.com, the double Olympic champion reveals why she's studying quantum physics and her belief in the importance of education, plus vital lessons learnt from her mother.

(2022 Getty Images)

When Ailing (Eileen) Gu is flying through the air during her freestyle skiing routines, it often seems like she is challenging the laws of gravity.

It is fitting, therefore, that the double Olympic champion from Beijing 2022 studies quantum physics at Stanford University in the United States.

“Outside of skiing I am a huge nerd!” she told Olympics.com.

“I really like to learn and to stretch my mind. That's what I really love about quantum physics; it's very conceptual and it makes you question the nature of reality. That's very fascinating to me because in my own way, when I'm skiing, I guess I'm bending the laws of what's possible in the first place.

“Achieving the impossible has always been something that has drawn me in, so that's where I see the parallel between quantum physics and skiing.

• Ailing (Eileen) Gu: My mission is to use sport as a force for unity"
• Ailing (Eileen) Gu: “Achieving the impossible has always drawn me in”

Ailing (Eileen) Gu: At home in the classroom and on the slopes

Growing up in the United States, Gu showed as much talent for academia as she did on the slopes, reportedly scoring 1580 out of 1600 on her SAT exams.

A year after winning two golds and a silver at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lausanne 2020 while representing the People’s Republic of China, she graduated high school early and gained early admission to study at Stanford, her mother’s alma mater.

Gu deferred her entry in order to focus on the Winter Olympics Beijing 2022, where a magnificent performance saw the then 18-year-old become the youngest freeski Olympic champion in history with gold in Big Air and halfpipe, as well as slopestyle silver.

The sporting prodigy and fashion model then began her studies in late 2022. But rather than considering herself a part-timer in any of her pursuits, she sees herself as a ‘full-timer'  in everything that she does.

“I've been a full-time student my whole life. But going back to being a full-time student after taking two years to be a professional skier is definitely a new step for me,” Gu continued.

“I’m adjusting to working three full-time jobs all year round between fashion, school and skiing.”

“I think being in college is giving me a lot of perspective of going back into the real world, and that has just been so much fun. I’m just enjoying myself, taking it one step at a time. It sounds a little boring, but I guess it's just true."

To some, the rigorous demands of Gu's gruelling studying, business and sporting schedule would seem unsustainable.

But the teenager believes this variety is exactly what prevents her from burning out , and sees it as a vital factor behind her success.

_“_I will continue to follow my different passions. I've always been a huge proponent of living a balanced lifestyle, so now I am really channelling my creativity and my self-expression through skiing, fashion, and academics.

“I think that just having an educational background and being able to apply that knowledge to anything, learning how you learn, learning how to perform under pressure, learning about how your mind works. I think these are all widely applicable skills, no matter what avenue you choose to apply it. There are many cross references and ways in which learning and sport are interconnected.

“Balance to me means making sure that you get enough sleep at night, making sure that you move your body every day, and that you do something for your mind. Maybe you're learning or you're nurturing the soul, something that can expand your worldview.”

Gu pays tribute to her mother's example

Now 19, Gu is keen to highlight the role her mother - Gu Yan - has played in her successful career.

Yan gained a master’s degree in chemical engineering in China before emigrating to the United States in her 20s to continue her studies, and enrolled in an MBA at Stanford.

Aged 40, she gave birth to Ailing, raised her as a single parent and instilled values that would help her daughter succeed in any field she put her mind to.

“My mom really inspired me growing up, mostly in her capacity to make things happen,” Ailing said.

“Everyone can talk about their lofty goals or seemingly unreachable ambitions, but being able to put your head down and create an actual action plan and work towards it each and every day is 90 per cent of the actual battle.

"So I think that her capacity to do that has always been really inspiring to me and something that I carry with me to this day.”

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I Admit It. I’m in Love With Fear.

Updated: Mar 29, 2023

Recently, I have been reflecting on our investment methodology, and one of the most important aspects is risk management. I believe this is the core of our investment approach. Coincidentally, we are currently in the midst of the Winter Olympics, and I am delighted to see the outstanding performance of the young athletes, especially congratulations to Su Bingtian and Eileen Gu.

Recently, I read an article by Eileen, which greatly impressed me. Extreme sports themselves involve constantly taking risks, but at the same time, it is crucial to manage those risks well, to strike a balance between them and with oneself. Eileen's article helped us to better understand her, and taught us a lot about growth, challenges, progress, and risk management.

In her own words, freeskier Eileen Gu describes finding balance between confidence in her ability and the thrill of uncertainty. Eileen Gu is only 18. Born and raised in California, Gu competes for her mother’s native China, where she hopes to win three gold medals: in halfpipe, slopestyle and big air. Gu’s relationship to fear is evolving. She thinks about it a lot. She keeps a diary, and some of her handwritten entries, she said, are devoted to the subject of fear, in all its forms. At the request of The New York Times, Gu wrote down her thoughts on fear — how she views it, how she manages it, how she hopes to conquer it. Essay by Eileen Gu FOR THE LAST 10 OF MY 18 YEARS, I’ve pursued a tumultuous love affair with fear. I’m a professional freeskier, and twin-tipped skis, 22-foot halfpipes and double-cork rotations are my main sources of adrenaline, the truly addictive core of extreme sports.Like all bewitching lovers (at least the ones in the novels I read, for lack of real-world experience), this significant other can be … mercurial. “Fear” is really an umbrella term for three distinct sensations: excitement, uncertainty, and pressure. I’ve learned that the nuanced indicators of each of these feelings can be instrumental to success when recognized and positively leveraged, and harbingers of injury when ignored.Though it’s easy to label extreme sport athletes as fearless or capricious, the countless hours I’ve spent visualizing tricks and practicing them in foam pits (foam. particles. everywhere ) and on airbags (think giant Slip ’N Slide) suggest otherwise. It’s biologically counterintuitive for us to place ourselves in positions of risk, and while we make every effort to physically prepare, no amount of metaphorically safety-netted practice can equate to the unforgiving snow slope that rushes up to meet us after a steep kicker launches us into the air. Instead of ignoring fear, we build unique relationships with it by developing a profound sense of self-awareness and making deliberate risk assessments.The work begins with visualization. Before I attempt a new trick, I feel a tightening high in my chest, between the base of my throat and the top of my diaphragm. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. As I ascend the gargantuan takeoff ramp, I imagine extending my legs to maximize lift. Then I picture twisting my upper body in the opposite direction I intend to spin, generating torque before I allow it to snap back the other way.Now, in my mind, I’m airborne. I see the backside of the takeoff immediately, then my flip draws my vision to the cloudless sky above me. My ears register the wind as a kind of song, every 360-degree rotation providing the beat to the music of my motion. As my feet come under me halfway through, I spot the landing for the briefest of moments before I pull my body into the second flip. I imagine my legs swinging under me as I return to a forward-facing position and meet the ground with my weight in the front of my boots. 1440 degrees. I smile. Then I open my eyes.In the split second following my visualization, the knot in my chest flutters and spreads — those famous butterflies reaching their final stage of metamorphosis. Excitement, the child of adrenaline, my true love and addiction. That tantalizingly precarious balance between confidence in my ability to execute the trick safely and excitement for the unpredictable experience to come. I’ve heard this state called “the zone,” which is indeed where I was when I became the first female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall.It doesn’t take much, unfortunately, for uncertainty to override confidence. Imperfect preparation moistens my palms, pushes that tight spot down into my stomach and makes each breath shallower than the last. The feeling isn’t panic, but something like dread. Danger! cries every evolutionary instinct. If I should choose to look past this safety mechanism, my body may act autonomously in the air, twisting out of the rotation and forcing me to brace for impact out of fear that full commitment to the trick may end in disaster. Every freeskier’s goal is to recognize the minute differences between excitement and uncertainty in order to maximize performance while minimizing the risk of injury.Finally, there’s pressure, an energy source that can be wielded in many ways. One’s experience of pressure — by far the most subjective facet of “fear” — is affected by personal experiences and perspectives. Expectations of family and friends, a competitive streak, or even sponsorship opportunities can provide the scaffolding for a high-pressure environment. Pressure can be a positive force for competitors who leverage it to rise to the occasion, but it can also single-handedly dictate competitive failure.But whether athletes alleviate or compound their innate desire to “prove themselves” depends largely on confidence. As I enter my early adulthood, I’m proud of the work I’ve done to cope with pressure by bolstering my self-esteem and minimizing my need for external validation. I focus on gratitude, perspective, and on the joy this sport brings me, regardless of whether I’m alone or in front of a worldwide TV audience. Though my views of myself and the world are constantly evolving, one thing is for certain: no matter how much time passes, I’ll always be a hopeless romantic when it comes to fear.

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Cold warrior: why Eileen Gu ditched Team USA to ski for China

At the beijing olympics the superpower rivalry will be played out on the slopes.

By Brook Larmer

E ileen Gu had one chance left. It was January 2019, and the newest and youngest member of the US freestyle ski team stared down the Italian mountain course that had foiled her on her first two runs in the World Cup final. In fourth place behind two American teammates, the 15-year-old California schoolgirl needed a dazzling finish to move closer to the goal she’d promised herself – and her mother – since she was a nine-year-old daredevil: competing in the 2022 Winter Olympics , now slated to take place in her mother’s birthplace, Beijing.

In a blur of black and red, Gu sped down the slope. After her final jump – two and a half turns in mid-air to a perfect backward landing – the pixels on the leaderboard rearranged and Gu’s name suddenly appeared in first place, next to the American flag. “It’s unreal!” she screamed. On the podium, sporting her first World Cup gold medal, Gu placed her hand over her heart as the American national anthem began to play. And she sang: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

There was little time to celebrate. As most of her American teammates raced home for the World Championships in Utah, Gu and her mother, Gu Yan, flew off in the opposite direction – to China. Gu spends part of every summer in Beijing, but this detour was unusual. It was hardly the fastest route back to high school in San Francisco. Nor was it, as Gu wrote cryptically six days later on Instagram, “a quick #hongkong pit stop before going home (finally)”. The newly crowned world number-one freestyle skier was going below the radar for a few days because she had a very special meeting to attend.

On February 1st 2019, less than a week after singing the “Star-Spangled Banner”, Gu reappeared in Beijing at an audience with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. The American teenager was now wearing a red-and-white Team China uniform, her bleached-blonde hair falling over the red five-star flag stitched on its front. Among the assembled athletes at the national winter-sports training centre, Gu stood in the front row, just a few feet from Xi, listening intently as he urged them to win honour for the motherland when it hosted its first Winter Olympics . “This is a once-in-a-century opportunity,” Xi told them. Their success, he said, was vital to “the nation’s great rejuvenation”.

“When I’m in the US, I’m American. When I’m in China, I’m Chinese”

Gu has never mentioned this encounter. Nor does it appear in any of the detailed reports and documentaries that Chinese media and Western sponsors have made about her life. But there, among the dozens of state-media photographs of Xi’s visit that day, Eileen Gu appeared, standing next to one of the most powerful men on Earth. After the speech, Xi posed with the athletes under a Chinese flag. It was a typical group photo except that front and centre, two over from Xi, was one of America’s top skiers. Gu’s hair made her stand out, as did her footwear. Whereas the Chinese athletes all wore trainers, Gu’s heavy winter boots peeked out from under her uniform. It was almost as if she wasn’t fully prepared for this invitation – or the decision she faced.

Over the next four months, as her classmates fretted over sophomore prom and physics tests, Gu agonised about which superpower to represent in the 2022 Olympics. It was, in part, a question of identity for the American girl raised in San Francisco by two strong Chinese women, her mother and grandmother, in the absence of her American father. Gu had always lived happily on the hyphen. “When I’m in the US, I’m American,” she has said. “When I’m in China, I’m Chinese.” But the 15-year-old now felt that she had to choose between her two identities, and between two countries locked in a trade war and an ideological struggle.

Finally, on June 6th 2019, Gu posted an announcement on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. “I am proud to represent China in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics,” she wrote. “I hope the pursuit of extreme sports can be a means through which people in China and the United States can enhance their communication, understanding and friendship…Beijing I am coming!” Less than an hour later, she wrote again, deploying a verb used for soldiers called up for duty. The post said simply: “Chinese freestyle skier Gu Ailing reporting.”

T wo and a half years on from that decision, Eileen Gu is the face of the Beijing Winter Olympics , a giant projection of Chinese soft power at a time when the government has been widely criticised for wielding far more of the harder type. Now 18 and three inches taller, Gu is dominating freestyle skiing, an acrobatic sport largely unknown in China which nonetheless offers a multitude of medals. China won only one Olympic gold in 2018, a humbling tally for a rising superpower. Gu by herself could win three in 2022.

Her influence extends far beyond the slopes. A fearless skier who moonlights as a fashion model, a top student who preaches female empowerment in both English and Mandarin, Gu has emerged as one of the world’s hottest marketing phenomena. Over the past year, she has appeared on the cover of Chinese editions of Vogue and GQ , Elle and Marie Claire , and signed lucrative contracts with dozens of companies, including Adidas, Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. Gu’s commercial success owes a lot to her talent, beauty and daring. Many brands also hope to exploit her newfound popularity to reach a market of 1.4bn people. Gu’s mother may have been envisaging just such a windfall: weeks before her daughter’s change in allegiance she set up a new company in America, DreamComeGu.

Nobody has pursued and promoted the young star more avidly than the Chinese government. Tasked with building an Olympic team worthy of a superpower, Chinese sports officials identified Gu as a possible centrepiece for a “naturalisation project” designed to recruit top athletes of Chinese heritage based overseas. China has no well-known winter athletes. So when the world champion freestyle skier Gu chose China over America, she became the darling of an increasingly nationalistic population, a symbol of the country’s growing strength and the perceived decline of its arch-rival.

A recent documentary on her was entitled: “A Wonderful Life of Infinite Freedom”

The Chinese media have gushed over Gu in endless reports that highlight her free spirit and love of the motherland. (A recent documentary was entitled: “A Wonderful Life of Infinite Freedom”.) In October she starred in a lavish short film celebrating the Olympic torch relay alongside China’s top pop idol, Jackson Yee. The film’s opening scenes unfold in the mountains of Xinjiang province, where China claims skiing was invented more than 10,000 years ago – and where the government has interned more than a million members of the local Muslim population, the Uyghurs, in re-education camps. The film ignores the thorny setting to create, instead, a gauzy love story in which Gu seems to embody China itself.

Gu portrays her move to Team China as a kind of love story, too, an attempt to heal the rift between two countries by bringing her sport and her inspiring story to the Chinese masses, especially young girls. Switching the flag next to her name wasn’t meant to be a political act; it was a personal choice. Gu’s decision hasn’t changed her identity or her peripatetic life. The bubbly teenager still lives in America, travels the world in a community of free-skiing nomads and, on visits to China, hangs out with friends who are as stylish, savvy and free-spirited as her buddies back home. “I feel that I am competing in skiing to unite two nations, both of which are my home,” Gu told Inkstone, a website based in Hong Kong. “I hope to break the divide between nations with passion and love.”

But here’s the rub: China is a far darker place today – and its relations with the West far more contentious – than when Gu changed her affiliation in 2019. It’s not just the shadow of covid-19, which has led the Chinese government to ban Olympic spectators and keep athletes in sealed bubbles. In the two and half years since Gu made her decision, China has crushed civil liberties in Hong Kong, imprisoned journalists for reporting on covid-19 and expanded the systematic oppression of the Uyghurs. The American government says the brutal crackdown in Xinjiang amounts to genocide. When Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008, the Chinese Communist Party paid lip service to becoming more responsive to international norms. This time, all pretence has been dropped: China, ascendant and unapologetic, expects the world to bend to its rules.

Her grandmother taught her to fear nothing – except second place

For all the selfless motives that Gu says drove her decision to leave Team USA , China’s dark turn has thrown the moral implications of her choice into relief. Gu is an individual going for gold. Yet she also, in some ways, embodies the Faustian bargain China has made with its people. Gu’s decision to represent China has amplified her fame and wealth, but it has also made her a showpiece for an increasingly repressive government that requires one thing in return: silence.

Gu and her mother declined requests for an interview for this story. Through Gu’s American agent, Tom Yaps, Gu Yan said the family would not take part unless they could review the entire article before publication – to guarantee that no criticism of China appeared in the text. “I understand how unconventional a request that is,” Yaps said, but political sensitivities were making them “very cautious”. Gu Yan, he told me, feared that “if [Eileen] participates in an article that has two paragraphs critical of China and human rights, that would put her in jeopardy over there. One thing and a career is ruined.”

All it takes is one thing. Just four months after Gu switched her allegiance to Team China, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, a basketball team, retweeted a message supporting civil-rights protesters in Hong Kong: “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong”. China’s furious reaction to a single retweet from a foreigner halfway round the world cost the National Basketball Association hundreds of millions of dollars: TV broadcasts in China were cancelled; NBA stores removed all Rockets merchandise. Chinese censors even scrubbed the Rockets from daily sports reports. It was as if the team never existed.

Again and again, the Chinese government forces countries, companies and individuals to make a choice: you’re either with us or against us. To preserve their access to the country, institutions from Apple and Hollywood to the International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) remain silent on all matters sensitive to the Communist Party. The Women’s Tennis Association is a rare outlier: in December, it severed its long, lucrative relationship with China to protest against the government’s silencing of the tennis star Peng Shuai after she made allegations of sexual abuse against a retired, high-ranking Communist Party official.

The pressure to stay quiet has only intensified ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Corporate sponsors banking on their business in China have gone out of their way to avoid answering questions about human rights. In January, the Chinese government even warned participating foreign athletes that “any behaviour or speech” that goes against Chinese laws and regulations would be “subject to certain punishment”.

Chinese citizens can face far worse consequences for crossing the invisible lines. (Peng Shuai’s fame and success could not protect her.) Gu seems acutely aware of the potential dangers. In America, she has made impassioned pleas about Black Lives Matter and anti-Asian violence, but she has avoided making any comments about social and political issues in China. That discrepancy is a reminder that the official narrative of Eileen Gu is not the whole story. On the surface, her life seems exhaustively documented on Facebook, Instagram and Weibo; Gu lets loose with edgier humour on TikTok. (She now has 1.4m Weibo followers, compared with 250,000 on Instagram.) Film crews from Chinese state television, corporate sponsors and fashion houses accompany Gu nearly everywhere. Yet these choreographed narratives can obscure as much as they reveal.

China won only one gold medal in 2018, a humbling tally for a rising superpower

China’s state-run media trumpeted Gu’s “conversion” from American to Chinese nationality. By choosing to represent China, she has taken the exceedingly rare step of naturalising as a Chinese citizen. (Consider: China had only 1,448 naturalised citizens in its entire 1.3bn population in 2010, the latest year for which there are figures. America naturalised an average of 720,000 citizens each year in the past decade.)

China, unlike America, does not recognise dual nationality after the age of 18. Under Chinese law, Gu would have had to give up her American passport by her 18th birthday, which fell last September 3rd. So far, Gu has avoided addressing questions about her citizenship. If she has not relinquished her American passport, is that a rare concession from the Chinese government or an act of passive resistance from Gu? We may never know.

E ileen Gu was 12 years old when she gave her first speech about female empowerment. Dressed in a blue skirt and white sailor’s shirt – the uniform of her $41,000-a-year all-girls’ school in San Francisco – she told the student assembly about her journey into the male-dominated world of freestyle skiing. As a seven-year-old, Gu bombed down ski runs with such reckless speed that her mother, looking for a safer alternative, enrolled her in a freestyle school. Only later did she realise that the sport’s aerial stunts were even more dangerous than racing. For years, Gu was the only girl on the freestyle team (the only non-Caucasian, too); at first the boys wouldn’t even share her ski lift. “Sexism still exists,” she told her female classmates. “Life is going to be a bumpy road for all of us, and building resiliency early on is important.”

As an only child raised primarily by her Chinese mother and grandmother, Gu grew up in a cocoon of strong women who encouraged her to break barriers and to battle through adversity. Their resolve was steeled by a tragedy that preceded Gu’s birth: in November 2002, Gu Yan’s sister, Ling, died from injuries sustained in a car crash while driving Gu Yan’s BMW convertible. Less than ten months later, Eileen was born, and Gu Yan bequeathed her a name that seemed to honour her sister: Eileen in English, Ailing (爱凌) in Chinese, meaning “Love Ling”.

The name of Gu’s father doesn’t seem to appear in any records: Gu never mentions him and Gu Yan has said only that he is an American graduate of Harvard University. Looming larger in Gu’s childhood was her grandfather, Gu Zhenguang, a retired engineer who moved to San Francisco before Gu was born. A former football player who taught himself to ski at the age of 75, Grandpa Gu saw himself as “the big tree” protecting his family. Her grandmother, Feng Guozhen, a former university basketball player, taught Gu to fear nothing – except second place. At 86, Feng still runs a mile each day. “My grandma gave me that drive and desire to win,” Gu said last year, “and my mom gave me the tools to do so.”

Her mother, Gu Yan, grew up during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution in a sprawling Soviet-style housing compound west of Tiananmen Square. The family enjoyed relative privilege as part of the Communist Party elite and Gu Yan joined one of the early cohorts at Peking University, known as “the Harvard of China”, after the Cultural Revolution.

It’s not clear exactly when she arrived in America, but according to her CV on LinkedIn, she began a research fellowship in molecular genetics at Rockefeller University in New York in 1989, just as thousands of students and activists fleeing the Tiananmen Square crackdown were flooding into the US under newly relaxed visa rules. Gu Yan sought not political asylum but economic opportunity, however. She soon left the lab to pursue an MBA at Stanford, followed by derivatives trading on Wall Street, then venture capital in Silicon Valley and China.

Weeks before Gu’s change in allegiance, Gu’s mother set up a company: DreamComeGu

In the late 1990s, as China’s economic expansion began to accelerate, Gu Yan returned to China to help finance a joint venture in the nascent high-tech sector. An article in 1998 in Guangming Daily , a Communist Party mouthpiece, praised Gu Yan for creating a “golden bridge” and giving up a high-flying Wall Street job “to serve the great cause of reform and opening up in the motherland”. Building bridges to China would become the family business.

When Eileen was born, Gu Yan had a new mission. In China, many parents funnel their children into an activity and then force them to study or practice until they burn out. (The Chinese athletics system practises an even more extreme version, assigning children to sports based on bone measurements and muscle flexibility.) Gu Yan later told a Chinese documentary that she wanted to stoke Gu’s passions. Schoolwork was important but Gu Yan also introduced her daughter to running and horseback riding, soccer and surfing, singing – and skiing. Along the way, Gu Yan tried to build up her daughter’s toughness, discipline and self-confidence.

It was an all-American upbringing, but Gu Yan made sure Gu also appreciated her Chinese heritage. “No matter where we are in the world,” she said, “we Chinese cannot forget our roots.” Gu’s grandmother, who speaks no English, taught her three-digit multiplication at age four; she mastered Chinese tongue-twisters and Tang Dynasty poetry. Each year, the family returned to Beijing, exploring hidden alleyways, eating candied haws and Peking duck, and playing hide-and-seek with neighbourhood kids. One summer they arrived in Beijing to find her friends had disappeared. “Where’d they all go?” she asked. The kids had enrolled in a cram school. Gu started taking maths and science classes too, helping her to speed ahead of American friends back home.

But nothing fired Gu’s imagination more than freestyle skiing, a sport for acrobatic outlaws – essentially skateboarding on skis – that got its start in the 1970s on the hippie fringes of North American winter sports (back then it was known as “hot-dogging”). “It feels just like flying,” she said. The Chinese sports system is geared to produce technical mastery and repetition, but Gu relished the creative element in freestyle. “This is a sport where you can express your personality, you can have your own style,” she told a Chinese reporter in 2015. “You don’t necessarily have to do what everybody else does. You can invent it yourself.”

I t was on a summer trip to Beijing that Gu, aged nine, met the man who would shape her future – the godfather of Chinese skiing. Lu Jian was an Oxford-educated economist who once served as an adviser to the State Council, China’s cabinet. He left China in 1992 to make his fortune trading futures in Chicago. Inspired by a ski trip to Canada, he returned to China a few years later, pockets full, and built the country’s first ski resort in northern Heilongjiang province. “At that time, there were probably no more than 500 skiers in all of China,” Lu told a Chinese interviewer, “so it was like trying to boil water from zero degrees.”

Lu himself became one of China’s first aficionados of freestyle skiing, introducing the sport at the next resort he developed near Beijing. In the summer of 2013, Lu heard that a young American freestyle champion was visiting and invited her to a “ski-off” at an indoor ski dome. A grainy video captures the first encounter between the two, half a century apart in age. Eileen Gu, in baggy yellow trousers and a red hat, takes off over a small jump, grabbing the edge of her skis in mid-air. Lu follows behind, mimicking her action. A week later, they had another ski session: the girl he called “Captain America” led the way.

Lu became her mentor and sponsor. The financial deal he made with her and her mother was modest, but Lu was also offering guidance and guanxi – the relationships that would bind Gu to China. Soon, the nine-year-old and her mother were signing contracts with several of Lu’s friends: a ski manufacturer, a clothing company, his ski resort. Since that first encounter, Lu has appeared at nearly every step in Gu’s evolution from America’s rising star to China’s Olympic hope. He even helped her set up a Weibo account using a nickname, “Frog Princess Ailing”, inspired by a green frog helmet she wore. (Lu’s own handle is “Drunken Snow”.) In the videos she posted on Weibo, Gu never failed to thank her Chinese sponsors, singling out one man with an honorific: “Sir Lu”.

China is a far darker place today than when Gu changed her affiliation in 2019

In the summer of 2015, Gu and her mother gathered with friends in Beijing to watch a live broadcast of the IOC vote for the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics. (Almaty in Kazakhstan was Beijing’s lone competition.) Even before IOC chairman Thomas Bach finished the word “Bei…,” the group erupted in cheers. “I was super excited,” said Gu, “but my mom was even more excited. She even cried.” Gu was only 11. Yet even then, the hope in the room was that Captain America would compete in Beijing seven years later – wearing a Chinese uniform. As a Chinese sponsor wrote on Weibo: “Come on, Eileen! The future of the motherland depends on you!”

In all its history, China has won only 13 Winter Olympics gold medals, compared with the 262 golds it has amassed in the summer games. Its gold-medal count has actually declined in each of the past three winter games. National pride was on the line. Xi Jinping spoke of this at the meeting of winter athletes in 2015: “If sports are strong, a nation is strong. If a nation is strong, it is strong in sports.” The party produced a blueprint for getting 300m people on the ice and snow, turning winter sports into a $155bn industry and developing a gold-medal-winning corps of winter athletes.

In 2018, around 80 Chinese athletes participated in only half of the Olympic events; this time, the mandate was to build a team more than twice that size to compete in nearly all of the 109 events. The problem: China had no experience in many of them. Chinese sports officials took the unusual step of bringing in more than 170 foreign coaches and also scoured the country for girls and boys who might be turned into curlers and bobsledders, snowboarders and skiers. Many freestyle skiers came from other sports; 16-year-old He Jinbo was a kung-fu student at a Shaolin academy before trading in his flying kicks for aerial spins with planks strapped to his feet.

“Two paragraphs critical of China would put Eileen in jeopardy. One thing and a career is ruined”

To speed things up, China added a “naturalisation project” to recruit overseas athletes. Many countries give out citizenship to improve their medal chances, but Olympic officials in Beijing looked mainly to the children of Chinese immigrants. China’s hockey team broke the ice with a slew of naturalised players, including its top scorer, Canadian-American Spencer Foo (though even with 15 foreign-born players the team is still terrible). Figure skating proved more fertile ground. The best female prospect was Alysa Liu, a 16-year-old, two-time American national champion who grew up across the bay from Eileen Gu. Her father, however, was a former dissident who fled persecution in 1989: he was not open to persuasion. (Two less talented but less political candidates were eventually enticed.)

No overseas athlete offered more potential glory than Eileen Gu. And though she spent only one month each year in China, after 2015 she seemed to be shadowed by the motherland wherever she went. In mid-2016, when Gu was 12, her mother gave China Central Television ( CCTV ), the state broadcaster, full access to their lives; a few months later, a CCTV film crew began following Gu around for almost a year from China and America to New Zealand and Europe. That year, Lu Jian even lived with Gu’s family in California for three months.

CCTV ’s first long documentary about Gu aired in China during the 2018 Winter Olympics – and served as Gu’s coming-out party in China. The documentary’s main purpose, it seemed, was to present Gu as an authentic Chinese patriot. In the opening scene, the 13-year-old and her mother are driven through Tiananmen Square, the historic plaza where Mao once revved up the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution – and where pro-democracy protests were crushed in 1989. As they ride through the square, Gu Yan urges her daughter to read the characters on the wall. “Long live the People’s Republic of China,” Gu recites in Chinese. Her mother then asks her to identify the man in the giant portrait above the gate. Gu turns to her and beams: “Mao Zedong!” They laugh together. Then, on cue, they gaze out with radiant smiles across the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square. “So beautiful,” says Gu Yan.

T he late-afternoon sun dropped below the mountain ridge in Chongli in northern China, making the snow icy and treacherous. It was December 2018 and on Gu’s first day on the future Olympic course, CCTV cameramen followed her as she sped through a practice run. Jumping off the final rail, Gu lost her balance and crashed backwards, hitting her head on the ground. Sliding to a stop, she lay still, legs akimbo. When her mother reached her, Gu looked up in confusion. “I’m having a hard time remembering things,” she said, starting to cry. “Why are we in China? Why are we in China?”

The apparent concussion forced Gu to pull out of a World Cup event two days later. Still, her question echoes. Less than a month before, in Austria, Gu had shared a Thanksgiving dinner with her new teammates on the American freestyle ski team. A month later, she would sing the American national anthem in Italy after winning her first World Cup gold medal – before reappearing days later in a Chinese uniform with Xi Jinping. Toggling back and forth between China and America had always been fun for Gu. Now she faced an uncomfortable choice.

We don’t know what swayed her decision. Whose idea was it to suddenly fly off to Beijing after her World Cup victory? What deals were cut or pressures brought to bear behind closed doors? What was the emotional landscape of a teenager facing fundamental questions of love and loyalty – to the coaches who had trained her, the mentors who had believed in her, to a mother as well as two motherlands? It’s still not clear how much power the 15-year-old had over the decision that would shape her future. “Gu Yan didn’t push,” insists a family acquaintance. “She wanted Eileen to make the decision for herself.”

Building bridges to China would become the family business

As Gu went silent on social media in the spring of 2019, US-China relations worsened. China’s government threatened retaliation for American tariffs on Chinese goods. On June 2nd, which happened to be two days before the 30th anniversary of the massacre near Tiananmen Square, Gu posed for a photo in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. Dressed in a grey “ USA ” hoodie, she stood in front of Andy Warhol’s brightly hued series of portraits of Chairman Mao. She is smiling, with both thumbs up – poised, as always, between America and China.

When Gu announced her decision on June 6th, the Chinese internet reacted with excitement. “Welcome home to win glory for China!” one commenter wrote. “So many excellent people have left for the United States,” wrote another. “To have one finally come back makes me cry!” (In 2019 alone, nearly 40,000 Chinese became naturalised American citizens.) On Weibo, Gu thanked her Chinese sponsors, starting with “Boss Lu”. Lu repaid the compliment: “Like the wind, the beautiful girl Ailing returns across the waves from the other side of the Pacific Ocean.”

Gu’s English-language announcement on Instagram was more calibrated. “This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make,” she wrote. “I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringings.” The Beijing Olympics offered “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to promote the sport I love”, she explained, “to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born.” Her decision, she suggested, went beyond sports or business; it was an act of diplomacy in a troubled world. Her message ended with three emojis: the American and Chinese flags, and a red heart.

In America, some applauded her “brave decision”. The US Ski & Snowboard Association graciously wished her “the best of luck in all her endeavours”. Other online commentators couldn’t contain their contempt. “Traitor!” yelled one. “Don’t you know there are concentration camps in China?” asked another. Martin Wiesiolek, a cross-country ski coach in Colorado who fled Communist Poland in 1984, minced no words: “You will end up serving as a political tool of the Chinese totalitarian regime.” The vitriol left the high-school sophomore shaken. “The thing that really caught me off guard was the amount of hate I had,” she told the South China Morning Post last year. “I was 15 years old and had death threats.”

A fter becoming a Chinese citizen, Gu didn’t move to China or start bunking down with her new teammates at their training camp in China’s mountainous north-east. She still lived with her mother and grandmother in their multi-million-dollar home in San Francisco’s swanky Sea Cliff neighbourhood, a world away from her Chinese teammates: classes at an exclusive high school, courtside seats at an NBA game, a bedroom nook overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. China’s sports officials are known for ruling their domains with military-style control, and Chinese athletes have long been required to give the bulk of their earnings to the sports system. But Gu freely followed her own training regimen and pursued every commercial opportunity.

Interest in Gu intensified after her announcement. The owner of a Chinese sports brand flew her to Paris Fashion Week. Chinese photographers swarmed her when she visited a Beijing mall, and a new commercial sponsor, Kiehl’s, whisked her off to Alaska for a photo shoot. On her 16th birthday, Gu received a video message from David Beckham welcoming her to the Adidas family.

Her skiing, meanwhile, only became more sublime. In the first year after changing affiliation, Gu earned seven gold medals in international competitions. Gu began to dominate two of freestyle skiing’s three Olympic events, slopestyle (a sloping course of rails, jumps and other obstacles) and halfpipe (tricks and flips going down on a 22-foot-high U -shaped ramp). It was a rare combination, akin to a footballer being equally adept as a striker and in goal. In February 2020, Gu became the first freestyle skier to win both events in the same World Cup competition. The one discipline left for her to conquer was big air (a single acrobatic jump off a 45-foot tall ramp), which debuts as an Olympic discipline this year.

“Come on, Eileen! The future of the motherland depends on you!”

Gu was one of the few professional skiers who followed a long day on the mountain with hours of homework. She was racing to finish her final two years of high school in a single year so she could train full-time for the Olympics. Covid-19 halted the ski season in the spring of 2020, but Gu kept to her school schedule and graduated early in June 2020. Going to Stanford University, her mother’s alma mater, was “the only dream I’ve held even longer than becoming a professional skier”, she said. That autumn she took a day off from training in Switzerland to take her college aptitude tests: she scored an almost perfect 1580 out of 1600. In December 2020, she posted on Instagram a video of herself sitting on her bed clicking the link that would reveal if Stanford had accepted her. The answer, of course, was yes. Gu raised her arms and screamed.

Like any engaged American teenager, Gu also began speaking out on social issues. Her political awakening seemed to come during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed George Floyd’s death in May 2020 at the hands of a white police officer. That summer, the 16-year-old blacked out her Instagram screen in solidarity with the movement. Raising awareness is “not enough”, she wrote. “To make a greater impact, I encourage everyone to…write to your local leaders or senators, join a peaceful protest.” Neither peaceful protests nor pressuring political leaders into action is encouraged in China, to put it mildly. (Chinese officials called racism “a chronic disease of American society”, but they did not allow their own citizens to show solidarity with a rights movement that aimed at police accountability.)

The rise in anti-Asian bigotry hit closer to home. Last year, after an elderly Asian man in San Francisco died following a racist attack, Gu and her grandmother were in a shop when a man started screaming obscenities about Asians infecting America with covid-19. Gu hurried her granny out of the store. “The fact that my very own Chinese grandmother could have been a victim of a hate crime…genuinely terrifies me,” she wrote on Instagram. San Francisco “is widely regarded as a liberal haven, and yet violence and hatred are on our doorsteps”. Gu has said nothing about the persecution of minority groups in China.

Gu and her mother have been tight-lipped about her commercial windfall, too. A year after setting up DreamComeGu Inc, with headquarters in the family home, her mother – who was chief executive of the company – also set up a limited-liability company, DreamComeGu LLC , in Nevada, a low-tax haven where the family has established a second home. As endorsements poured in, Gu’s fast-expanding Weibo account turned into a procession of commercial ads, from local Olympic sponsors like Mengniu Dairy and Three Trees Paints to top names in global luxury: IWC , Cadillac, Estée Lauder.

One of Gu’s main Chinese sponsors is Anta, the world’s third-largest sportswear company after Nike and Adidas. Last year, Anta set up an interactive Eileen Gu theme park in a Shanghai mall, with giant screens and a larger-than-life plastic cartoon figure of a wide-eyed Gu in Anta ski gear. (Anta also supplies the IOC and the Chinese Olympic team.) Just as the park was opening last March, Anta was defiantly pulling out of the Better Cotton Initiative, a global watchdog that stopped licensing companies using materials from Xinjiang province because of worries about forced labour.

As Chinese consumers angrily revolted against Western brands, including Nike and Adidas, which joined the Xinjiang cotton boycott, Anta doubled down on its pledge to use Xinjiang cotton. Investors sent Anta stock soaring. The IOC has refused to answer questions about its relationship with Anta. Gu, for her part, has stayed as quiet as the wide-eyed cartoon figure in her theme park.

E ileen Gu is now everywhere. There she is at a Beijing bus stop, wearing a snow-white ski outfit on a billboard for China Mobile. Down the road, she appears in red lipstick and a traditional Chinese dress in a display for tech giant JD .com. In the mall, she’s carrying skis and a cup of coffee on posters for Luckin Coffee. At the newsstands, her face peers out from almost every fashion magazine, including the latest edition of Vogue China , which she guest-edited. At night Gu’s image looms even larger – lit up on a massive screen above a city plaza, working out in her Anta gear.

It would have been hard to imagine three years ago, when 15-year-old Gu stood next to Xi Jinping on that secretive visit to Beijing, that she would share top billing at these Olympics with him. These are Xi’s games, after all. And, as Xi looks to become China’s strongest leader since Mao by securing a third term as president later this year, he dominates the nation’s media. Still, Gu has become what the Chinese media call a “marketing supernova”. Her two dozen corporate sponsorships dwarf the total number held by all other Chinese winter-sports athletes, according to Beijing News , and each skiing victory pushes her endorsement fee higher, to more than $2m today. According to the newspaper, she probably earned more than $15m in 2021, which would make her the world’s third-highest-earning female athlete behind Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams. It’s a stunning outcome for someone in a niche sport where the prize money for winning a world championship event is just $12,000.

“I was 15 years old and had death threats”

It has been far from a normal childhood. In September, she celebrated her 18th birthday week on three continents: at a photo shoot in Beijing, on a billionaire’s mega-yacht in Dubai and on the glacier where she trains in the Austrian Alps. A few days later, she broke off her training to fly to the Met Gala in New York as one of the new faces of Victoria’s Secret. Wearing a polka-dotted Carolina Herrera dress and a necklace with 39 carats of Tiffany diamonds, Gu wobbled down the red carpet in five-inch red stilettos – looking like a novice skier on the bunny slope. By the time the evening was over, Gu was on more solid footing, posing for a selfie with Rihanna at the after-party.

Even with the whirlwind of commercial distractions, Gu was focused on the Olympics. In early November, she posted a sultry photo of herself with two Tiffany necklaces, noting cheekily: “guess u could say I like gold hard(wear) around my neck”. A few days later she put up a video of herself in Austria becoming the first woman in history to pull off a jaw-dropping jump called the double cork 1440 (four spins, two off-axis flips, more than 70 feet in the air). “lil #worldsfirst today,” Gu wrote on Instagram. (Three weeks later, Gu unleashed the double cork 1440 to win her first World Cup big-air gold.) Gu’s video got rave reviews from skiers and fans – and from China’s diplomatic corps. “It’s whole another level,” wrote foreign-affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying, a phrase other diplomats tweeted in unison. “Looking forward to her performance in #Beijing2022 Olympics!”

The video of Gu went viral only days after another Chinese Olympian, tennis star Peng Shuai, posted on Weibo shocking allegations of sexual assault and coercion by a former top Communist Party official. “Even if I court disaster like an egg against stone or a moth to a flame, I will tell the truth about you and me,” she wrote. The post vanished in less than an hour, and censors scrubbed the Chinese internet of all references to the allegations, blocking hundreds of search terms, even the word “tennis”. Peng was not seen for more than two weeks, reappearing in staged meetings that only deepened the alarm among women’s rights activists and tennis authorities. Serena Williams and dozens of top tennis players added their voices of concern. Gu remained silent. She promotes female empowerment, yet she seemed powerless to speak up for her fellow Chinese Olympian. “Where is Eileen Gu?” one Twitter commenter asked. “Want to inspire Chinese girls?!? Here’s your chance.”

Peng’s case reinvigorated calls for a boycott of the games from human-rights organisations. When one of Gu Yan’s Facebook friends warned of a boycott, she responded: “Won’t happen. The president of IOC said that Olympics should not be political.” In December, America and three other countries announced a “diplomatic boycott” – they would send athletes, but no top officials – citing the continuing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. (At least six other countries followed suit.) China’s foreign-ministry spokesman swatted away the symbolic gesture with a gibe: “US politicians keep hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the games.”

When Eileen Gu arrived in Beijing for the Olympics in January, one of her first acts was to post a photo of herself on Weibo polishing off a plate of pork-and-leek dumplings. Her Chinese fans loved it. But they will have little chance to see her in person. China’s “closed-loop” anti-covid restrictions seal off all Olympic athletes and venues from the outside world. The extreme measures may make for a ghostly games, but they could help Gu avoid questions from fans and reporters, especially about her legal status. When she turned 18 in September, under Chinese law Gu was required to renounce her American citizenship. One of Gu’s big sponsors, Red Bull, noted on its website: “Gu decided to give up her American passport and naturalise as a Chinese citizen in order to compete for China.” Yet when a Wall Street Journal reporter called Red Bull to confirm, the passage was removed.

“US politicians keep hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the games”

Did Gu really relinquish her passport? Her name has never appeared on the US Treasury Department’s list of expatriated individuals. In January 2021, she became a candidate for a US Presidential Scholars Programme that is open only to US citizens or permanent residents. Gu still spends far more time in America than in China, and will return to attend Stanford in the autumn. Yet she has never commented on her citizenship status. In late December, Gu won the World Cup halfpipe in Calgary, a victory that was particularly gratifying, she said, because a “lost passport” had caused her to arrive at the competition late. Gu did not clarify whether the missing document was American or Chinese.

With her carefully chosen words and silences, Gu shows a diplomat’s gift for dancing on a tightrope. She never criticises China – ”one thing” would risk it all – but she also doesn’t offer patriotic soundbites about winning honour for the motherland (as Chinese athletes often do). The government still uses her as a showpiece, but Gu is focused on promoting her sport – and herself. ​​At age 18, she is no longer a simple vessel for other people’s dreams. “My vision”, as she often labels it, is based not on patriotism but a boundless individualism. “We’re all in this together, pushing human limits,” she said last year, “and that is really something that transcends nationality.” In Gu, China may have found an answer to its gold-medal dreams. But her brand of success – freely pursuing her passions, revelling in her individual feats – doesn’t reflect China’s nationalist goals so much as the free-flowing, hot-dogging American sport Gu fell in love with as a little girl.

When Gu competes, she rarely mentions China or gives a shout-out to her Chinese teammates. She talks more about the need “to prove myself to myself”. Recently, Gu recalled crashing badly on her first big-air jump in one of her first competitions as a Chinese athlete in 2020, when she succumbed to the pressure of the crowds, the media, the sponsors. Narrowing her focus to the smallest of details – a lucky cat she had drawn with eyeliner on her hand – she then pulled off two almost perfect jumps to win the gold. “That actually taught me that I didn’t want to win for other people,” she said. “I wanted to win for myself.”

Gu has stayed as quiet as the wide-eyed cartoon figure in her theme park

From the time Gu began freestyle skiing, her mother couldn’t bear to watch her perform the riskiest tricks. “During a competition, I would only ask the coach ‘Has she landed safely?’” she told a Chinese newspaper. The Beijing games represent a far more perilous jump. Gu has been preparing to compete in the Olympics for half her life, and now all of China – and much of the world – will be watching.

On February 7th, finally, Gu will be perched in full ski gear at the top of an undulating tower in west Beijing, 200 feet above the ground. The Winter Olympics’ big-air ramp, built on top of an old steel mill, stands next to the very training centre where Gu met China’s leader exactly three years ago. Pushing her skis over the edge, Gu will be poised to careen down the ramp and launch herself into a soaring corkscrew.

Gu is more than just an athlete now. Ever since she made her choice, she has tried to keep a balance between China and America, between corporate advertisers and human-rights activists, between her dreams of a borderless world and the hard nationalism of the country she has chosen to represent. There is no perfect equilibrium. But riding along the razor’s edge, Eileen Gu has managed to make it to the precipice. Now it’s time to leap. ■

CORRECTION: Shortly after publication we realised that some of the images in this article were inappropriate. We removed them and we apologise for the error. Nothing else was changed and we stand by our fair-minded and rigorous journalism.

Brook Larmer is a freelance writer in Bangkok and author of “Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business, and the Making of an NBA Superstar”

ILLUSTRATIONS: MARI FOUZ

ADDITIONAL IMAGES: RED BULL, CHRISTIAN ANWANDER, MARTIN RUSLCH, GETTY, REUTERS, EYEVINE, ALAMY, OCOG

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• 注册时间 @ 2021-02-17

最近看到不少夸谷爱凌斯坦福申请信写得好的，我特意去搜了搜

谷爱凌申请斯坦福大学的ESSAY，大家评评？

Essay by Eileen Gu

FOR THE LAST 10 OF MY 18 YEARS, I've pursue a tumultuous love affair with fear I'm a professional freeskier, and twin-tipped skis,22-foot halfpipes and double-cork rotations are my main sources of adrenaline, the truly addictive core of extreme sports.

Like all bewitching lovers (at least the ones in the novels I read, for lack of real world experience) this significant other can be ... mercurial. “Fear" is really an umbrella term for three distinct sensations: excitement, uncertainty, and pressure. I've learned that the nuanced indicators of each of these feelings can be instrumental to success when recognized and positively leveraged, and harbingers of injury when ignored.

Though it's easy to label extreme sport athletes as fearless or capricious, the countless hours I've spent visualizing tricks and practicing them in foam pits (foam. particles. everywhere) and on airbags (think giant Slip’N Slide) suggest otherwise. It's biologically counterintuitive for us to place ourselves in positions of risk, and while we make every effort to physically prepare, no amount of metaphorically safety-netted practice can equate to the unforgiving snow slope that rushes up to meet us after a steep kicker launches us into the air. Instead of ignoring fear, we build unique relationships with it by developing a profound sense of self-awareness and making deliberate risk assessments. 

The work begins with visualization Before I attempt a new trick, I feel a tightening high in my chest, between the base of my throat and the top of my diaphragm. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. As I ascend the gargantuan take off ramp, I imagine extending my legs to maximize lift. Then I picture twisting my upper body in the opposite direction) intend to spin, generating torque before) allow it to snap back the other way. 

Now, in my mind, I'm airborne. I see the backside of the takeoff immediately, then my flip draws my vision to the cloudless sky above me. My ears register the wind as a kind of song, every 360-degree rotation providing the beat to the music of my motion. As my feet come under me halfway through, I spot the landing for the briefest of moments before I pull my body into the second flip. I imagine my legs swinging under me as I return to a forward-facing position and meet the ground with my weight in the front of my boots.             1440 degrees. I smile. Then I open my eyes.

In the split second following my visualization, the knot in my chest flutters and spreads - those famous butterflies reaching their final stage of metamorphosis. Excitement, the child of adrenaline. mv true love and addiction That tantalizingly precarious balance between confidence in my ability to execute the trick safely and excitement for the unpredictable experience to come I've heard this state called "the zone, which is indeed where I was when I became the first female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall.

It doesn't take much, unfortunately, for uncertainty to override confidence Imperfect preparation moistens my palms, pushes that tight spot down into my stomach and makes each breath shallower than the last. The feeling isn't panic, but something like dread. Danger cries every evolutionary instinct. If I should choose to look past this safety mechanism, my body may act autonomously in the air, twisting out of the rotation and forcing me to brace for impact out of fear that full commitment to the trick may end in disaster. Every freeskier's goal is to recognize the minute differences between excitement and uncertainty in order to maximize performance while minimizing the risk of injury.

Finally, there's pressure, an energy source that can be wielded in many ways. One's experience of pressure - by far the most subjective facet of “fear”- is affected by personal experiences and perspectives. Expectations of family and friends, a competitive streak, or even sponsorship opportunities can provide the scaffolding for a high-pressure environment. Pressure can be a positive force for competitors who leverage it to rise to the occasion, but it can also single-handedly dictate competitive failure.

But whether athletes alleviate or compound their innate desire to “prove themselves" depends largely on confidence. As I enter my early adulthood I'm proud of the work I've done to cope with pressure by bolstering my self-esteem and minimizing my need for external validation. I focus on gratitude, perspective, and on the joy this sport brings me, regardless of whether I'm alone or in front of a worldwide TV audience. Though my views of myself and the world are constantly evolving, one thing is for certain: no matter how much time passes. I'll always be a hopeless romantic when it comes to fear.

• 注册时间 @ 2016-05-14

写的真不错，信心十足。

• 注册时间 @ 2021-08-12

写得真不错。而且这一句话就能让人决定录取了：when I became the first female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall.

• 注册时间 @ 2020-12-15

wwnu 发表于 2024-04-18 20:22 谷爱凌申请斯坦福大学的ESSAY，大家评评？ Essay by Eileen Gu FOR THE LAST 10 OF MY 18 YEARS, I've pursue a tumultuous love affair with fear I'm a professional freeskier, and twin-tipped skis,22-foot halfpipes and double-cork rotations are my main sources of adrenaline, the truly addictive core of extreme sports. Like all bewitching lovers (at least the ones in the novels I read, for lack of real world experience) this significant other can be ... mercurial. “Fear" is really an umbrella term for three distinct sensations: excitement, uncertainty, and pressure. I've learned that the nuanced indicators of each of these feelings can be instrumental to success when recognized and positively leveraged, and harbingers of injury when ignored. Though it's easy to label extreme sport athletes as fearless or capricious, the countless hours I've spent visualizing tricks and practicing them in foam pits (foam. particles. everywhere) and on airbags (think giant Slip’N Slide) suggest otherwise. It's biologically counterintuitive for us to place ourselves in positions of risk, and while we make every effort to physically prepare, no amount of metaphorically safety-netted practice can equate to the unforgiving snow slope that rushes up to meet us after a steep kicker launches us into the air. Instead of ignoring fear, we build unique relationships with it by developing a profound sense of self-awareness and making deliberate risk assessments.  The work begins with visualization Before I attempt a new trick, I feel a tightening high in my chest, between the base of my throat and the top of my diaphragm. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. As I ascend the gargantuan take off ramp, I imagine extending my legs to maximize lift. Then I picture twisting my upper body in the opposite direction) intend to spin, generating torque before) allow it to snap back the other way.  Now, in my mind, I'm airborne. I see the backside of the takeoff immediately, then my flip draws my vision to the cloudless sky above me. My ears register the wind as a kind of song, every 360-degree rotation providing the beat to the music of my motion. As my feet come under me halfway through, I spot the landing for the briefest of moments before I pull my body into the second flip. I imagine my legs swinging under me as I return to a forward-facing position and meet the ground with my weight in the front of my boots.             1440 degrees. I smile. Then I open my eyes. In the split second following my visualization, the knot in my chest flutters and spreads - those famous butterflies reaching their final stage of metamorphosis. Excitement, the child of adrenaline. mv true love and addiction That tantalizingly precarious balance between confidence in my ability to execute the trick safely and excitement for the unpredictable experience to come I've heard this state called "the zone, which is indeed where I was when I became the first female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall. It doesn't take much, unfortunately, for uncertainty to override confidence Imperfect preparation moistens my palms, pushes that tight spot down into my stomach and makes each breath shallower than the last. The feeling isn't panic, but something like dread. Danger cries every evolutionary instinct. If I should choose to look past this safety mechanism, my body may act autonomously in the air, twisting out of the rotation and forcing me to brace for impact out of fear that full commitment to the trick may end in disaster. Every freeskier's goal is to recognize the minute differences between excitement and uncertainty in order to maximize performance while minimizing the risk of injury. Finally, there's pressure, an energy source that can be wielded in many ways. One's experience of pressure - by far the most subjective facet of “fear”- is affected by personal experiences and perspectives. Expectations of family and friends, a competitive streak, or even sponsorship opportunities can provide the scaffolding for a high-pressure environment. Pressure can be a positive force for competitors who leverage it to rise to the occasion, but it can also single-handedly dictate competitive failure. But whether athletes alleviate or compound their innate desire to “prove themselves" depends largely on confidence. As I enter my early adulthood I'm proud of the work I've done to cope with pressure by bolstering my self-esteem and minimizing my need for external validation. I focus on gratitude, perspective, and on the joy this sport brings me, regardless of whether I'm alone or in front of a worldwide TV audience. Though my views of myself and the world are constantly evolving, one thing is for certain: no matter how much time passes. I'll always be a hopeless romantic when it comes to fear.

Very confident

• 注册时间 @ 2003-01-04

保真吗？这篇 确实写的很好。

• 注册时间 @ 2016-05-23

横空出世的自信，真是airborne！

不难理解她不招有些人喜欢。但也能看出人家根本不care，也根本没把那些人放在过自己一个level的层面过。年少轻狂，实力为王。两样全占了。

• 注册时间 @ 2011-10-21

clearly not a Harvard or Yale clone

• 注册时间 @ 2024-04-17

写得真不错。而且这一句话就能让人决定录取了：when I became the first female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall. sighaaaa 发表于 2024-04-18 20:55

一个小众项目，全世界连的女生两个巴掌数得过来，中国为了奥运金牌总数，在北京奥运会第一次添加的项目！下届奥运都取消了

• 注册时间 @ 2005-07-02

一个小众项目，全世界连的女生两个巴掌数得过来，中国为了奥运金牌总数，在北京奥运会第一次添加的项目！下届奥运都取消了 不知道写世界上第一个吃屎的女人，能进斯坦福吗？ GuBiao 发表于 2024-04-18 21:45

谷玩这个，确实带动了一批有钱人掏钱包送孩子滑雪。如果谷玩吃屎，带动的了经济么？

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Undergraduate, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

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I Admit，I‘m In Love With Fear

Essay by Eileen Gu

FOR THE LAST 10 OF MY 18 YEARS, I’ve pursued a tumultuous love affair with fear. I’m a professional freeskier, and twin-tipped skis, 22-foot halfpipes and double-cork rotations are my main sources of adrenaline, the truly addictive core of extreme sports.

Like all bewitching lovers (at least the ones in the novels I read, for lack of real-world experience), this significant other can be … mercurial. “Fear” is really an umbrella term for three distinct sensations: excitement, uncertainty, and pressure. I’ve learned that the nuanced indicators of each of these feelings can be instrumental to success when recognized and positively leveraged, and harbingers of injury when ignored.

Though it’s easy to label extreme sport athletes as fearless or capricious, the countless hours I’ve spent visualizing tricks and practicing them in foam pits (foam. particles. everywhere) and on airbags (think giant Slip ’N Slide) suggest otherwise. It’s biologically counterintuitive for us to place ourselves in positions of risk, and while we make every effort to physically prepare, no amount of metaphorically safety-netted practice can equate to the unforgiving snow slope that rushes up to meet us after a steep kicker launches us into the air. Instead of ignoring fear, we build unique relationships with it by developing a profound sense of self-awareness and making deliberate risk assessments.

The work begins with visualization. Before I attempt a new trick, I feel a tightening high in my chest, between the base of my throat and the top of my diaphragm. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. As I ascend the gargantuan takeoff ramp, I imagine extending my legs to maximize lift. Then I picture twisting my upper body in the opposite direction I intend to spin, generating torque before I allow it to snap back the other way.

Now, in my mind, I’m airborne. I see the backside of the takeoff immediately, then my flip draws my vision to the cloudless sky above me. My ears register the wind as a kind of song, every 360-degree rotation providing the beat to the music of my motion. As my feet come under me halfway through, I spot the landing for the briefest of moments before I pull my body into the second flip. I imagine my legs swinging under me as I return to a forward-facing position and meet the ground with my weight in the front of my boots. 1440 degrees. I smile. Then I open my eyes.

In the split second following my visualization, the knot in my chest flutters and spreads — those famous butterflies reaching their final stage of metamorphosis. Excitement, the child of adrenaline, my true love and addiction. That tantalizingly precarious balance between confidence in my ability to execute the trick safely and excitement for the unpredictable experience to come. I’ve heard this state called “the zone,” which is indeed where I was when I became the first female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall.

It doesn’t take much, unfortunately, for uncertainty to override confidence. Imperfect preparation moistens my palms, pushes that tight spot down into my stomach and makes each breath shallower than the last. The feeling isn’t panic, but something like dread. Danger! cries every evolutionary instinct. If I should choose to look past this safety mechanism, my body may act autonomously in the air, twisting out of the rotation and forcing me to brace for impact out of fear that full commitment to the trick may end in disaster. Every freeskier’s goal is to recognize the minute differences between excitement and uncertainty in order to maximize performance while minimizing the risk of injury.

Finally, there’s pressure, an energy source that can be wielded in many ways. One’s experience of pressure — by far the most subjective facet of “fear” — is affected by personal experiences and perspectives. Expectations of family and friends, a competitive streak, or even sponsorship opportunities can provide the scaffolding for a high-pressure environment. Pressure can be a positive force for competitors who leverage it to rise to the occasion, but it can also single-handedly dictate competitive failure.

But whether athletes alleviate or compound their innate desire to “prove themselves” depends largely on confidence. As I enter my early adulthood, I’m proud of the work I’ve done to cope with pressure by bolstering my self-esteem and minimizing my need for external validation. I focus on gratitude, perspective, and on the joy this sport brings me, regardless of whether I’m alone or in front of a worldwide TV audience. Though my views of myself and the world are constantly evolving, one thing is for certain: no matter how much time passes, I’ll always be a hopeless romantic when it comes to fear.

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