This year’s edition of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue releases in just a short few days, and the lineup of athletes is star-studded. Multiple Stanford Cardinal alum are set to feature in the magazine and one of those stars is Olympic freestyle skier, Eileen Gu. One of the world’s most successful Winter Olympians, Gu continues to inspire women everywhere.
Only 21 years old, Gu has already accomplished more in her life than most people dream of. In her first Winter Olympics at just 18 years old back in 2022, the San Francisco native opted to compete for China instead of her home country of the United States, and while it drew considerable controversy, she did not let that stop her.
Winning three medals in freestyle skiing during the Olympics–two gold and one silver, Gu became the first freestyle skier ever to win three medals at one Olympics.
By 2023, it was reported by Forbes that her salary was well north of $20 million, making her among the world’s highest paid female athletes. But to get to where she is now, it did not come without challenges–especially in a sport that has been traditionally dominated by men.
“Free skiing is a very male-dominated sport. I think the first time that I had girls on my team, I was around fourteen or fifteen,” Gu said. “So from like eight to you know, 13, 14, I was the only girl on my team.
“So I definitely felt as though I stuck out a little bit and I spent most of that time trying to be a boy– like double XL neon orange hoodies, like Nike Elite socks, like just middle school boy was my aesthetic. I think that part of that was because I thought it was cool, and that’s fine.
“But the other part I think was definitely trying to mask myself and trying to fit in and be more accepted. I just wanted to make friends, and I wanted to look like the other people in the industry, and for the most part, those were boys.”
Throughout her career, Gu has also struggled with her body–being on the taller side for her sport. With sports like freestyle skiing requiring someone to generally have a lower center of gravity and be on the shorter/smaller side, Gu is considered more of an anomaly in her sport. But despite that, she still has made sure to adapt and work with what she has.
“I wouldn’t say I have the ideal body type for skiing in the sense that I’m way too tall,” Gu said. “So if you think about kind of doing flips and think about gymnastics or think about figure skating, when you wanna flip and spin, it’s easier to have a lower center of gravity. It’s easier to be smaller.
“I am five nine, so that is not gonna be happening for me. But I think what it taught me was to embrace what you have. There’s certain things that you can’t really change about yourself, and so learning to adapt your style and learning to adapt your skiing to those kind of genetic or inherent factors that you might have, it produces a different kind of style and it imbues your craft with your own touch, and that’s something that I think is really beautiful.”
Now, Gu has become arguably the world’s best at her sport and after an inspiring Olympics that has seen her take the world by storm, she has become a major pioneer for freestyle skiing and has helped pave the way for more women to partake in the sport. But in Gu’s eyes, the sports growth–particularly among women, has picked up long before she took the world by storm.
“The progression of women’s skiing has just been skyrocketing in the last, you know, five years, ten years,” Gu said. “It has been so inspiring to first watch it when I was younger, and then now be a part of it. It has made me really retrospective and made me introspective and thinking about what is the legacy that I wanna contribute to this sport.”
A quantum physics student at Stanford when she is not competing, Gu continues to work diligently towards her degree but has her sights set on the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, where despite the controversy she received from her decision last time, she plans to once again represent China and will look to further grow her legacy.
