Eileen Gu - The 'snow Princess' Who Divides Opinion
ByKatie Falkingham
BBC Sport Senior Journalist in Livigno
Updated 22 February 2026
Wherever Eileen Gu goes, her fans will follow. Headlines will too.
With 6 medals, including 3 golds - the third of which she won in Sunday's halfpipe - she is the most embellished freestyle skier in the history of the Games.
But she is also someone who transcends her sport, a 22-year-old global super star with a bank balance to make your eyes water.
for its 'snow princess' at the Beijing 2022 Olympics where, as the poster woman of the Games, she duly delivered.
She became freestyle snowboarding's youngest Olympic champ with her big air and halfpipe golds at the age of 18, and the very first to win 3 medals at the same Games when she added slopestyle silver.
Later that year, she was called one of Time publication's 100 most influential people on the planet.
"I similar to being the best. I've always wished to do that," stated Gu at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, where she earlier won silver medals in the big air and slopestyle.
"I wished to be the very best at mathematics when I was in kindergarten, and then I desired to enter the finest high school, and I desired to have the greatest SAT rating, and after that I wished to get to the very best college, and I wished to be the finest skier I could be.
"Then I wished to do every occasion, and after that I desired to win them all. When you get a taste of it, it's type of addictive."
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On and off skis, Gu is a high achiever in every part of her world.
California-born and raised by an American daddy and Chinese mother, she went to personal school in San Francisco and is presently taking a sabbatical from her studies at Stanford University, where she majors in global relations and formerly studied quantum physics.
She is likewise proficient in Mandarin, and as a kid would spend summertimes in Beijing.
"Sometimes it seems like I'm carrying the weight of 2 countries on my shoulders," Gu stated earlier in the 2026 Games.
In 2019, at the age of simply 15, she changed her sporting obligation from the US to China, desiring to "influence countless young people in Beijing - my mother's birth place" before the 2022 Olympics.
Whatever her thinking, it was a choice that showed profitable.
In December, Forbes ranked Gu as the fourth-highest paid female professional athlete for 2025, behind only tennis gamers Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek.
But unlike those 3, only a small amount of her $23.1 m (₤ 17.1 m) earnings last year came from cash prize from her sport - around $100,000 (₤ 74,000).
Instead, it comes through recommendations with brands such as Red Bull, Porsche and Tiffany & Co, while she has actually strolled the runway for Louis Vuitton and Victoria's Secret and is signed by designing agency IMG.
It likewise emerged in 2025, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, external, that Gu and another professional athlete were set to be paid a combined $6.6 m (₤ 4.9 m) by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau.
In overall, the two professional athletes were said to be paid almost $14m (₤ 10.4 m) over the past 3 years by the Bureau.
But her choice to complete for China was likewise one that drew much criticism, not simply since of China and the US' rivalry as the world's 2 most significant economies, but because of China's authoritarian Communist Party rulers and its poor record on human rights - which it rejects.
While the initial furore died down, it has actually raised its head once again at these Games.
At the start of the Olympics, American freestyle skier Hunter Hess spoke out about the actions of the United States' Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) organisation and ongoing stress in the US.
In January, extensive care nurse Alex Pretti, 37, and fellow Minnesota local Renee Good, 37, were both eliminated by ICE agents in the city, triggering widespread protests.
Asked what it means to represent the USA, Hess stated: "It's a little tough.
"Just since I'm wearing the flag does not suggest I represent whatever that's going on in the US."
President Donald Trump reacted to Hess' remark by calling him a "genuine loser", and Gu was one of numerous professional athletes who openly protected Hess and others speaking up.
"As someone who's been captured in the crossfire before, I pity the professional athletes," she said.
But that infuriated her critics, provided Gu chose to speak out against Trump however has never criticised China.
Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom called her a "traitor", adding she "was born in America, raised in America, resides in America and chose to contend versus her own nation for the worst human rights abuser on the planet - China".
"You don't get to delight in the freedoms of US citizenship while acting as a worldwide PR possession for the Chinese Communist Party," he composed on X.
When inquired about China's human rights record by Time magazine, external, in an interview published in January, she addressed: "I'm not a professional on this.
"I haven't done the research. I do not think it's my company."
A 'ludicrous point of view' and 'disappointing choices'
Gu has 2.6 m fans on Instagram, has accumulated 11.7 m likes on TikTok, and at the Livigno Snow Park high up in the Italian Alps, no professional athlete has more fans in presence.
Clad at a loss colours of China, they line the front of the fan areas, flags decorated with images of Gu's face pegged to the fences, and commemorate her every run like it has clinched Olympic gold.
After every run, the ever-driven and disciplined Gu looks for out her mother, Yan, to examine video footage on her phone. Yan, apparently a successful investor who brought her daughter up single-handledly, is accredited at the Games and is the first person Gu commemorates her successes with.
During Monday's big air final, Yan was seen enjoying together with former International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
After competitions, Gu is the one every media outlet wishes to speak to, and she with dignity and nicely obliges as she slowly shuffles through the mixed zone.
But it was from an interview earlier this week that her remarks to a journalist went viral, when she was asked if she felt her two silver medals were really two golds lost.
"I'm the most embellished female freeskier in history. I believe that's a response in and of itself," she responded.
"How do I state this? Winning a medal at the Olympics is a life-altering experience for every single athlete. Doing it five times is tremendously harder since every medal is similarly tough for me but everyone else's expectations increase, best?
"So the two medals lost scenario, to be rather frank with you, I believe is sort of a ridiculous viewpoint to take.
"I'm showcasing my best snowboarding, I'm doing things that rather actually have actually never ever been done before so I believe that is more than good enough. But thank you."
In the lead-up to the Games, Gu did interviews with the likes of Vogue and Time publication, but it was reports in the Swiss media, external that had the prospective to further fuel a competitive competition at the top of the sport.
It was reported that the coach of Swiss skier Mathilde Gremaud left her team to sign up with Gu's on the eve of the Games, simply as he had four years previously before Beijing 2022.
At those Games, Gremaud pipped Gu to slopestyle gold, while Gu won the big air title with Gremaud taking bronze.
This time around, Gremaud again won slopestyle gold, with Gu taking silver, while the Swiss star withdrew from the huge air after a crash, with Gu going on to finish second again.
Before that huge air final and as an outcome of reaching it, Gu had actually taken to Instagram to highlight a scheduling problem.
It suggested, as the only female competing in three freeski events, she would miss a complete day of halfpipe training. After interesting the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) for another opportunity to train, she stated she had actually been declined.
"This decision is disappointing to me because it seems to oppose the spirit of the Games," she stated.
"Daring to be the only woman to complete in 3 occasions should not be punished. Making finals in one occasion must not drawback me in another."
BBC Sport understands Gu had already been handpicked as one of 10 professional athletes - five guys, 5 females - invited to a halfpipe screening training session, while having three official training sessions is more than the usual two held before World Cups.
In a statement, FIS informed BBC Sport: "For athletes who select to complete in numerous disciplines and/or numerous occasions, disputes can sometimes be inevitable."
So major is Gu taking these Olympics that she has brought 21 sets of skis with her to Livigno, 7 per event. Asked by BBC Sport the number of she would typically require to a competition, she replied 2 or 3.
She certified 5th for the halfpipe last, which was later on postponed from Saturday to Sunday due to heavy snowfall, and looked listed below par in her opening run when she crashed on her very first trick.
Gu redeemed herself on the second run, though, posting a 94.00 rating that moved her to the top of the podium, and bettered it once again to 94.75 on her last effort to safeguard her title.
Compatriot Li Fanghui took silver, while Great Britain's Zoe Atkin won bronze.
"I am not a gaming lady, but if I were, I took a quite huge bet on myself," stated Gu.
"There was a chance that everything could fail, and I would win absolutely nothing since I'm attempting to do excessive. But in my head I was like, 'Even if whatever crashes and burns, I tried, and I will never regret trying'.
"It's not being scared to try, particularly as girls too, because a great deal of the time we get in our own method and there's this sense of, 'What if individuals make fun of me? What if I look dumb? What if it's not possible?'.
"It's trusting yourself to try, and if it doesn't work, that's OK. But who understands? Strive the stars."
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