Eileen Gu Reveals the Powerful Way She Silenced Her Haters
What helped professional skier Eileen Gu silence her detractors? Becoming better at skiing than they are, she said in a recent episode of Red Bull’s Winter Heroes.
Gu explained that she was the only girl on her ski team until she was 14. In an archive video included in the episode, a young Gu said that no one wanted to ride the chairlift with her at first. In the present day, she recalled the “infinite times” that she’s heard someone say that she’s “skiing like a girl” or skiing badly.
“I felt this unjust burden to carry all of womanhood,” she said. “Because if I wasn’t good, then I was just confirming all of these subconscious biases about women and their ability to perform in sports.”
Gu has gone on to become a living refutation of that assumption.Â
She’s claimed three X Games gold medals, three Olympic medals (with only one Olympic appearance), and has found success in all three of the major freeskiing disciplines—halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air—a rare feat in modern skiing where athletes typically specialize in the events where they perform best.Â
In 2024,Sportico named Gu the second-highest-paid female athlete that year, with $22 million in earnings. “I found the best way to, kind of, shut up the, you know, 25-year-old, who’s talking smack to his friend, is actually just to be better than them,” Gu said.
Watch Winter Heroes: Eileen Gu on Red Bull TV. Keep reading for more about what Gu revealed in the episode.
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Photo: VCG via Getty Images
The Winter Heroes episode also highlighted Gu’s full-bore, multi-faceted lifestyle.Â
Alongside her duties as a competitive skier, she’s a high-profile model and a student at the famously exclusive Stanford University. She joked that, presumably because she’s on the move so much, she “pretty much” only eats in the car.Â
The whirlwind of media appearances, interviews, and podiums has rocketed Gu into the international spotlight, but it also sometimes seems to be a source of anxiety.
For Winter Heroes, Red Bull followed Gu during her appearance at the 2024 World Cup halfpipe competition in Secret Garden, China. In a frank moment, she told the camera that the night before, she’d had a recurring nightmare that she was being interviewed and filmed while she was sleeping.
“I’d wake up and be hallucinating and like looking around, and there was no one in my room,” she said. “I think I’ve been doing a little too much media recently.” Afterwards, during training, she concussed herself. In her first competitive run, she fell and hit her head again. But Gu, perhaps unsurprisingly, ended up winning the event, adding to her growing list of podiums and first-place finishes.
“I’m so grateful and so fortunate to have the platform that I do,” she said. “That I’m able to represent not just myself when I ski, but actually the sport, and particularly women’s skiing.”
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