Like any college freshman, Eileen Gu is busy. When she’s not tackling psychology and physics in class, you can find her freeskiing on the slopes, spontaneously running a half marathon, or modelling for Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co.. You know, just the everyday student grind…

The last time we spoke to Gu, she was a 17-year-old Olympic gold hopeful who had just made history as the first Chinese athlete to win gold in the X Games. Now, with three Olympic medals (not one, but two golds) under her belt of accolades, the 19-year-old is thriving in her other element: academia.

“College classes have been amazing. I’ve always been a huge nerd,” she says as she gushes about her university life at Stanford. You may know the freeski prodigy for her double corks, but Gu is also a physics enthusiast who loves her quarks. “I texted my mom after my first quantum physics class in tears because of how beautifully the professor had presented bosonic field theory!”

Returning to the classroom has been “the epitome of luxury” for Gu, who took a gap year for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. There, she secured her first Olympic gold in Women’s Big Air by landing a left double 1620 with a safety grab, which required four and a half revolutions in the air. It was a trick Gu had never attempted before in a competition, but she took the leap — and became the youngest freestyle skiing gold medallist in Olympics history.

“Keep doing what you love, keep getting better, and never be afraid to try something new,” says Gu. “Everything we take for granted now was once done for the first time by a pioneer who laid the path for others to follow,” she muses. “Impossible is a temporary state of being. If not you, who?”

“Pioneer” is certainly one way to describe Eileen Gu. Undoubtedly, her innate talent for skiing is unmatched. What truly sets her apart, however, is her hope to inspire young girls in sports — an aspiration she’s been carrying with her since the age of 12, when she took to her school podium with a speech about representation and equality for female athletes.

“Often, I’d be the only female freeskier in the terrain park at a resort, and so I’d put pressure on myself to do bigger, better tricks in an attempt to ‘represent’ womens’ skiing in a positive light,” Gu reveals. Her ambitions came hand in hand with fear and responsibility. “It was always intimidating hearing grown men tossing around ‘you ski like a girl’ or speaking demeaningly about women on the chairlift as a 9-year-old, so while I was too scared to use my voice, I always put pressure on my skiing to do the talking for me.”

And so, every whoosh made by Gu’s ascensions from the ramps and every swish from her twists in the air became part of her voice. A voice which has spoken volumes for women in extreme sports and continues to resound in the hearts of young female skiers across China and beyond.

“More than anything, being a woman in sports is about confidence and resilience, hearing the negativity and choosing to turn it into positive motivation for yourself, and uplifting other women around you,” she says as she looks back at her skiing journey. “Seeing the incredible proliferation of freeskiing worldwide following the Winter Olympics brings me such happiness and pride. I love seeing such a tangible cultural shift toward confidence, dialogue, and personal growth through participation in sports, especially among young people and girls.”