LIVIGNO, Italy — Eileen Gu is going home with three Winter Olympic medals from Italy. The 22-year-old Olympic skier won gold in the women’s halfpipe. It’s the third medal of her 2026 Winter Games.
Gu previously won two silver medals at the Milan Cortina Games. She previously won two golds and a silver at the Beijing Games.
Gu has won six Olympic medals in six events – she’s the first skier, male or female, to do that. “The reason I love the records so much is that it’s not about man or woman,” Gu said according to AP.
With her sixth Olympic medal, Gu became the most decorated freestyle skier in Winter Games history, surpassing a tie with Canada’s Mikael Kingsbury and teammate Xu Mengtao.
“I’m the most decorated freeskier of all time, male or female. That’s a testament to competitive strength, it’s mental strength. It’s being able to perform under pressure. It has nothing to (do with) if you’re a boy or a girl,” she added.
Adding a personal touch, Gu tied a gold ribbon in her hair to match the medal she earned on the mountain, a symbol of her third Olympic gold—more than any athlete in her sport.
“I took a big risk in trusting myself,” Gu reflected on her frenetic year, “and I’m glad that I did.”
Born in the United States but competing for China, Gu balances a modeling career, global recognition, and an influential platform—achievements made possible by her status as the world’s best freeskier.
She was also the only woman willing to divide her attention between halfpipe, slopestyle and big air over the 2 1/2-week marathon of Olympic risk-taking.
It was a quest that limited her training, rest and sometimes her sanity. Never her confidence, though. “I´m not a gambling woman, but if I were, I took a pretty big bet on myself,” Gu said.
“There was a chance everything could go wrong and I could have walked away with nothing, because I was trying to do too much. But in my head, even if everything crashes and burns, I tried. I’ll never regret trying.”
The risk of doing too much once again reared its head on the first run of this bluebird day in Livigno – the halfpipe bathed one half in sun, the other in shade a day after a snowstorm postponed the final.
Gu lost balance on the landing of her very first jump of the contest, forcing her to abandon the run toward the top of the pipe.
Each of her qualifying rounds at these Olympics involved a fall and a must-make return that she landed every time just to get to the final.
In halfpipe, largely viewed as the premier event in the sport and also the event where Gu has won 15 of her 20 World Cup titles, the odds of Gu not landing any of her three runs in the final seemed slim. In fact, it was none.
She ended up with not just the best score of the 32 runs by 11 athletes, but the best two scores of them all. Her second run was a 94 and her last was a 94.75.
“I tried for gold,” said Li Fanghui, who made this the first 1-2 finish for China in this event. “But my first goal was for silver.”
