Eileen Gu Takes Silver in Slopestyle

ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Eleven freeskiing finalists took turns trying to navigate the slopestyle course, which has proved itself a formidable foe during these Winter Games.

The series of rails and obstacles followed by three sets of big jumps, all built in snow in a manner to evoke the Great Wall, has both dazzled and befuddled some of the best skiers and snowboarders.

But on another frigidly cold and clear day at Genting Snow Park, Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland outperformed all the others, including Eileen Gu, who was hoping to give China another gold medal.

Gremaud scored 86.56 on her second of three runs, outdistancing Gu, who came in second, and Kelly Sildaru of Estonia, who took bronze.

The three favorites in the event — Sildaru, Tess Ledeux of France and Gu — took the first-round lead, in that order. But Gremaud opened the second of three runs with a score of 86.56, upping the ante for the favorites.

By the time Gu took her second run, she had dropped out of medal contention. And when she fell coming backward off the third rail, all her medal hopes were left to her final run. She scored a 86.23, bumping her up to second place.

That placed American hopes on Hamill’s teammate, Maggie Voisin. A veteran of the global freeski circuit, but still only 23, Voisin was making her third Olympic appearance. In 2014, at 15, she was at the Sochi Games but broke a leg in training before the competition. At the 2018 Games, she finished fourth. She arrived in China hungry for a medal but finished fifth.

Most of the competition’s focus fell on Gu, the 18-year-old who was born and raised in California by a Chinese mother with deep roots in Beijing. She spent a couple of years with the U.S. national team before announcing, in 2019, that she would compete for China, in part to help build the country’s winter-sports market.

Gu is an emerging star and a ubiquitous presence on Chinese television during these Olympics. Known as Gu Ailing, her face seems to be everywhere, including in the sky (a recent light show created a portrait of her using more than 500 drones) and in advertisements for her many Chinese sponsors. In the past year, she also has become a model for Tiffany & Company, Louis Vuitton and other high-end retailers.

Her mother, Yan Gu, has a credential — most Americans could not bring family and friends to China because of pandemic-era restrictions — and has been at the events, cheering her daughter on.

After landing a solid, pressure-packed qualification run in slopestyle on Monday, Gu confidently stood at the bottom of the course, awaiting a score that she knew would advance her to the final. She pulled from her pocket a shao bing, a type of Chinese flatbread, and bit into it. Within minutes, she and shao bing became a popular hashtag on Chinese social media.

In the past month or so, and mostly in the past week since she won big air, the number of Gu’s Instagram followers — mostly in the West, rarely seen in China — has grown sixfold, to 1.1 million. She has far more followers on Weibo, a Chinese site akin to Twitter, where she posts more often. On Tuesday morning, her account was approaching five million followers, nearly five times as many as she had at the start of the year.

Her decision to compete for China has raised questions both there and in the United States. China does not allow dual citizenship, and Gu has dodged questions about whether she has surrendered her U.S. passport. Online critics suggested in recent days that her use of sites that are banned in China indicate that she is out of touch with the struggles of the millions of Chinese who face censorship.

But during her Olympic events, she has shined, and China has embraced her warmly. Most of those who braved the subzero temperatures on Tuesday were rooting for her, waving small flags and clapping enthusiastically whenever she performed. Cameras and heads were aimed in her direction constantly. Commotion followed her around the slope.

The love affair would only deepen with one more medal — especially a gold one.