Eileen Gu: China’s Olympic champion on downtime routine of piano, composing and meditation at Beijing 2022

ByMichael Hincks

Published 12/02/2022 at 08:10 GMT

Eileen Gu won big air freestyle skiing gold at Beijing 2022, and the American-born Chinese athlete will be going for further glory in the freeski slopestyle and halfpipe. In a bid to ignore the hype around her recent success, the 18-year-old said she is playing piano, composing music and meditating in her room at the Winter Olympics.

Eileen Gu is writing, composing and playing piano as she looks to remain focused before trying to add to her big air freestyle skiing gold at Beijing 2022.

The Chinese star broke the internet in China after landing a 1620 trick to become an Olympic champion by just 0.75 points ahead of France’s Tess Ledeux.

Gu is hoping for further glory in the freeski slopestyle and halfpipe, and she opened up to Olympics.com about her downtime between events.

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"I’m a very introverted person naturally so I do a lot of journaling, I do a lot of self-reflection. I play piano a lot. I actually have a keyboard here with me," she said.

"It’s really small but I just have it in my room so I play it and compose stuff at night. I take really long showers, I meditate.

"All of those things to kind of just keep to myself and stay in my own head as opposed to listening to all these voices who you know, 90 per cent of the time don’t know what they’re talking about so…"

Gu is American born but was raised by her Chinese mother, and chose to represent China back in 2019 - saying in Beijing she will not "waste time" wading into discussions about her nationality.

• Gu breaks the internet with Olympic gold for China
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She has certainly been a hit in China, with her victory in the big air causing Chinese social media channel Weibo to crash due to the amount of people congratulating the 18-year-old, who is also a model.

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"This Olympics is everything I could have dreamed of and more," she added.

"For one, being surrounded by the Beijing accent and hearing Chinese again is really refreshing, because of COVID I’ve not been able to be back here as much as I would have liked to, as much as I’m used to."

Writing on Instagran after her gold, Gu said: "OLYMPIC GOLD!!! In absolute disbelief still. Thank you friends, family, and fans for all the support and thank you, skiing, for the experiences you have given me. Best day of my life. And to @tessledeux and @mathilde_gremaud … thank you for pushing women’s skiing to the level it’s at now, and for inspiring me for so many years."

Gu will take part in slopestyle qualifying on Sunday with a view to reaching the final on the following day. The halfpipe takes place afterwards, with qualifying on Thursday and the final on Friday.

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