"Whether she is walking a fashion runway, amping herself up at the top of a mountain or digging into one of those physics lessons she takes for fun, Olympic champion Eileen Gu can probably boil down her main goals to these: Do her best. And bring as many people along for the ride as possible."
"You know, we're all risking our lives out here, she said with a laugh, while contemplating a more in-depth answer about a question that everything eventually seems to come back to with her: How much weight does she put into all the opinions about her choice to compete for her mother's home country, China, despite being born and raised in California?"
"The 22-year-old multitasker will, in fact, put her life on the line somewhere between 10 and 15 times at the Milan Cortina Games, trying to duplicate her feat from four years ago when she won medals in all three of freeskiing's inherently dangerous disciplines, halfpipe, slopestyle and big air. She will do it inside a cauldron of Olympic pressure, magnified by the geopolitical forces that typically come with the Games and, when the Winter Games roll around, often focus on her."
Eileen Gu balances fashion, mountain training and physics studies while keeping two core goals: perform at her best and bring others along. The world's top overall freestyle skier has made elite success appear effortless during her first four years in the spotlight, though the work remains intense and dangerous. She acknowledges risking her life repeatedly and weighs public opinion about competing for her mother's home country despite being born and raised in California. At the Milan Cortina Games she will attempt 10 to 15 high-risk runs to repeat medals across halfpipe, slopestyle and big air amid heavy Olympic pressure and geopolitical scrutiny. She receives vitriol for perceived cultural choices but says she focuses on where she can have the most impact and hopes critics channel energy into positive action.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]