China’s freestyle ski star Eileen Gu has admitted that injuries “damaged her confidence” before she hit top form again as she prepares for a shot at Olympic triple gold.
Gu was one of the standout stars at the Beijing Games four years ago, winning the women’s half-pipe competition and big air and taking silver behind Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud in slopestyle.
Since then, a combination of injuries and academic commitments, including her studies at Stanford and a term at Oxford University, have limited her time on the slopes.
“It has been tough. I do full-time school, which I have zero regret about, as I’ve had the most fantastic time doing that, and also did a wonderful quarter at Oxford,” she told Olympics.com.
“But the injuries really set me back and damaged my confidence a little, and maybe instilled some doubt in me for a period of time.”
Gu, 22, returned to the World Cup circuit in style in December, winning the halfpipe competition in Secret Garden, in China, before securing her 20th World Cup title at a slopestyle event in Laax, Switzerland, last month.
The US-born skier, who switched allegiance to China, where her mother is from, in 2019, said she had “let go of the suffering” and arrived in Italy “feeling light and ready and excited”.
“I don’t mind the pressure. It’s just energy, right? So if you have more energy, it’s a good thing.”
Gu, who is also a model, said she had come to the Milan-Cortina Games with a “rookie mentality”.
“There’s no chip on my shoulder. There’s no burden. There is nothing to defend, no defending gold medallist,” she said.
“I’m here to compete just like everyone else, do my very best, and we’ll see what happens.”
Gu will compete in the women’s slopestyle qualifying competition at Livigno’s Snow Park on Saturday, with defending champion Gremaud also in the field.
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