Eileen Gu is the poster girl of China’s planned snowsport revolution aimed at getting 300million of the population onto snow and ice.
With four-and-a-half revolutions of a trick she had never tried before on her final run of the Big Air competition, she ensured the first of a possible three golds and cemented her position as the face of the Beijing 2022.
This was supposed to be the weakest event in the repertoire of the 18-year-old, who was born in San Francisco and lives in the United States but in her mid-teens switched allegiance to China.
To the backdrop of a steel mill in Beijing, the city where her mother Yan was born, the teenager produced a 1620 to take the gold from France’s Tess Ledeux by less than a single point.
“That was the best moment of my life,” Gu said after her win. “The happiest moment, day, whatever of my life. I just cannot believe what just happened.”
The teenager had been lying in the bronze-medal position before her final run. On the ramp, she opted for the do-or-die nature of the 1620 and landed the best run of the entire competition – a 94.50 to take her overall tally to 188.25.
It left Ledeux agonisingly 0.75 points behind, a gap she could not claw back on her final run. She had to make do with silver while Mathilde Gremaud took the bronze for Switzerland.
Gu said of her last run: “That was a trick I have never done before, had never attempted before. I was thinking ‘should I improve on my previous one and go for the silver or should I whip out this random trick I’d never done before and go for gold?’
“In my head, I wanted to represent myself and this competition style I really take pride in, and that desire to push myself and push the sport. Even if I didn’t land it, I felt it would send a message out to the world and hopefully encourage more girls to break their boundaries.”
Gu has two more shots at freeskiing gold in Beijing in halfpipe and slopestyle to further influence her countrymen and women to take to the snow, as well as her planned other even loftier target of thawing relations between China and the US.
It proved a thrilling debut for women’s Big Air at the Games in which the youngest member of Britain’s 50-strong team in China, 17-year-old Kirsty Muir, finished an impressive fifth on her Olympic debut.
Her first run of 90.25 was her best of her three, which briefly put her in the bronze medal position. She wasn’t clean enough on her second run and fell on her third to finish outside the medals.
The Aberdeen schoolgirl, who had qualified in seventh for the final, said: “I’m so happy right now honestly, the level was insane. It feels amazing. I couldn’t have hoped to have skied better today and I’m so proud of all the girls.”
