Athlete Profile
Global Star Eileen Gu Returns to X Games
By Nicole Dreon
Jamie Schwaberow/X Games
By Nicole Dreon
Eileen Gu is like many 20-year-olds: She attends college full-time and likes to ski on the weekends and holidays. She has roommates and belongs to a sorority. She loves her book club and even started a college basketball club.
But Eileen Gu is like no other 20-year-olds. She’s one of one. The sophomore at Stanford University graduated early from a prestigious high school, aced her SATs and excels in quantum physics. Those ski weekends? In December, she was in China and Colorado for halfpipe World Cup comps, which she won. Her November break was a ski camp in Europe.
While her peers might attend football games, Gu walks the runway in Milan, jets to Paris to accept the Action Sportsperson of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards (and hangs with Lionel Messi) and rubs elbows with Mark Zuckerberg at Science awards galas.
The budding global superstar already is huge in China, where her mother, Yan Gu, was born and raised before moving to the United States as an adult. “I was just in China,” says former X Games gold medalist and current Ski analyst Tom Wallisch, “And you literally can’t walk 100 yards without seeing a billboard or a poster or a storefront with Eileen’s face on it. She is absolutely everywhere.” That’s no exaggeration; the fashion model also frequently graces the pages -- and covers -- of magazines like Vogue Magazine and InStyle Magazine.
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The American-born Gu decided while in her mid-teens to ski for China in competitions, and her superstar status in the country was cemented when she captured two gold medals at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. And what of representing China? Eileen -- raised by her mom, Yan, and maternal grandmother Feng Guozhen -- once described her San Francisco upbringing to X Games Research as “very culturally Chinese.” The family cooked traditional Chinese meals and Mandarin was spoken in the house.
Gu’s high profile in China has offered her a unique perspective of the world, and earning the Laureus Sportsperson award reflects one of Gu’s greater goals. “I’m blessed to have this platform, and I want to make sure people understand that my mission in skiing is much bigger than just myself and winning contests,” she says. “I have a lot of gold medals at home and I’m happy and grateful for that, but at the end of the day what really brings me a sense of purpose is spreading the sport to more people and hopefully introducing it to more young girls. (I want to be) an advocate for gender equality and for a balanced lifestyle that includes staying in school.”
Those lofty aspirations aren’t some recent revelation, either: Gu has been advocating publicly for women in sports since at least age 12, when she gave this speech about girls in skiing.
A Return to X Games
In January 2024, Gu will return to X Games, where it all began. She burst onto the international ski scene at X Games Aspen 2021, when the 17-year-old made a splash with gold medals in SuperPipe and Slopestyle and a bronze in Big Air. In the process, she became the first woman to win two gold in their rookie appearance at an X Games as well as the first rookie woman to earn three medals at a single event.
China’s covid quarantine rules prevented Chinese athletes from attending contests in the month before the 2022 Winter Olympics, so Gu was forced to miss X Games Aspen that year. She arrived on-site at Aspen 2023 intending to compete in three disciplines but injured a knee during Slopestyle practice and had to withdraw from the event.
At X Games, Gu will resume her typical juggling act: She’ll focus on university studies at night and between SuperPipe and Slopestyle training sessions. She’s still favored for gold in both disciplines, but will the packed schedule affect her?
“I’ve always taken a pretty cerebral approach to my skiing,” Gu says. “Being a full-time student at Stanford and also having a full-time career as a fashion model on the side has forced me to be so grateful for the time I do have on snow. When I’m on snow, it matters. I make it count. I think it’s more about higher productivity; it’s about quality over quantity. I really do believe in that.”
And we really do believe that she’s about to make more believers at X Games Aspen 2024.