'I have met my goal' - Beijing poster girl Eileen Gu happy to influence a new generation

Eileen Gu says she’s achieved her ambition to inspire Chinese youngsters through her success at the Winter Olympics.

The 18-year-old has picked up two medals in Beijing, taking gold in the freestyle skiing big air event, before coming second to land silver in the slopestyle.

Gu was born in the United States but in 2019 she chose to represent China in competition.

Her mother moved from China to the US after graduating from Peking University and studied for an MBA qualification at Stanford, where she met Gu’s father.

Speaking about her reasons for switching allegiance, the double medallist said, "I chose to ski for China because there's this massive opportunity to spread the sport to people who haven't even heard of it before. And honestly, I have met my goal. There are 300 million people on snow, so to have even influenced a tiny fraction of that makes me immensely proud.”

Gu has in many ways become the poster girl of the Olympics, not just through her success on the slopes, but she quite literally has her face plastered on posters throughout Beijing advertising one of the country’s big coffee companies.

The teenager wants to use her profile productively, saying: “I feel as though I use my voice as much as I can in topics that are relevant and personal to myself and targeted towards people who are willing to listen to me. And that being said, I'm also a teenage girl, so I do my best to make the world a better place. And yeah, I'm having fun while doing it. I'm skiing. I'm hoping to inspire young girls, so that's my message right now."

The teenager was so close to adding a second gold to her collection in the slopestyle event, but finished just 0.33 points behind Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud to settle for silver.

"I am satisfied of my performance today. I have done everything I can in my three runs. I cannot control the rest. I cannot decide what score I get and what rank I finish. I can only be the best of myself, to cope with the pressure and to perform well in the run. I wanted just to focus on my tricks", she said.

Gu will now turn her attentions to the women’s halfpipe, as she hopes to take a hat-trick of medals away from the Games.

As for Gremaud, she completed an incredible turnaround to take victory ahead of Gu in the slopestyle. She finished 12th in qualification only to soar back to form to win Olympic gold.

The 22-year-old was delighted with how she managed to respond, saying, "yesterday I was really feeling down in a hole. When I think back on it, it's incredible because I feel so much better today. I really was not at ease yesterday. I really felt terrible. But there is only one thing you can do when you are at the bottom and that is go up. I cried for about 30-minutes and after that was able to focus on today. That's it. When you have 12th ranked in qualification, I'm sure you can even recover. But in the final everyone starts from zero again and I still had hopes."

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