Ski slopes and beyond
Gu Ailing was shining
Last night, the Sports Department of Xinhua News Agency named the top ten athletes in China in 2021, and Gu Ailing became the only ice and snow athlete on the list.
Just this month, Gu Ailing won the freestyle ski U-track World Cup championship and the New Tour Invitational Tournament in Bronze Mountain, USA, and the limelight was unparalleled.
Gu Ailing, who has such a huge aura on her head, just celebrated her 18th birthday in September this year.
After announcing her naturalization to represent China at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in 2019, the girl, who considered herself a "Beijing girl", became a domestic phenomenon athlete in just a few years.
Outside the snow field, Gu Ailing is also the "child of other people's families". After a year of high school jumps, he entered Stanford with a high score of 1580; signed to top modeling agencies, magazine blockbusters and brand invitations.
Of course, her beautiful appearance is one of the reasons for her attention, and more importantly, she has a huge passion and energy that is unimaginable to ordinary people, and she treats skiing, life, and fashion.
01
Flashing around in the air
It makes me feel incredibly free
In 2019, Chinese and American mixed-race skier Gu Ailing announced through social media that he would renounce his American citizenship and naturalize in China to represent the Chinese team at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
After that, Gu Ailing won more than a dozen championships on the international stage, heroically killing all sides and becoming a big hit in ice and snow events.
Outside the arena, she also continued to appear in the public eye and gained a large number of fans. When introducing herself to others, Gu Ailing will say, "I am Ailing, a Chinese girl." ”
She said her Chinese "born to be." Her mother Gu Yan would tell her from a young age that as a Chinese, she should not forget her roots wherever she went.
"That kind of sunshine enthusiasm and positive energy can come through pictures and screens," CCTV reporter Wang Xiaojie made this comment on Gu Ailing in an interview last month.
In the "Winter Olympics are coming" program, Wang Xiaojie invited Gu Ailing to eat an authentic Peking duck. Although her mother would take her back to Beijing every year to see her grandmother, Gu Ailing was still full of fascination with Peking duck.
"[Roast duck] is kind of like my personality, you can make it in a lot of different ways, and everybody can make it to their favorite flavor." Gu Ailing explained this in a fluent Beijing film.
Horseback riding, basketball, football, surfing, cross country, athletics... Gu Ailing, who has loved challenges since childhood, has tried almost all the sports he can play, and each of them can be practiced. In the end, I chose to make my favorite skiing my life goal.
Gu Ailing's athletic talent comes from family legends. Mama Gu Yan is a sports learning double all-rounder, graduated from the Department of Chemistry of Peking University, and was a member of the school's short track speed skating team and ski instructor during her time at school. After completing her undergraduate studies, Gu Yan went to Stanford University on the other side of the ocean to continue her studies and met Gu Ailing's father.
Gu Ailing was born in 2003 and was only three months old when gu Yan was carried to the ski resort. At the age of three, Otani Ei ling stepped on the snowboard for the first time and entered the ski training class to start serious study. "While children my age were still crying and complaining, I was busy on the small ramp."
Gu Ailing still remembers the scene of skiing when she was a child, after falling down, she found that the snow around her was higher than her own, and once she was tired of practicing and fell asleep in the snow, Gu Yan looked for half a day to find her behind the snowdrift, and she was in a hurry.
The challenge limit is also engraved in the genes of Otani Ailing, who slid all the way down from the top of the mountain without slowing down, which made her mother look frightened.
In order to make her "slower", when Gu Ailing was eight years old, her mother took her to the professional free ski team of Lake Tahoe and became the only girl in the team.
Every weekend, the family drives for hours to send Gu Ailing to the team for training. The training was tiring and hard, but Otani Elliing kept enjoying it, and this rhythm continued until she was 15 years old.
The freestyle skiing project is very difficult and accompanied by danger, but Gu Ailing is fascinated by its charm, "you can invent your own movements, have your own style." ”
Every weekend, the time she looks forward to most is after two o'clock in the afternoon, flashing in the air, making her feel extremely free.
02
Top 0.4% of SAT in the U.S.
The "school bully" who sleeps for ten hours
At the age of 15, Gu Ailing began to really emerge on the field, and won the championship and runner-up in several international snow federation World Cups and U-shaped venue World Cups in 2019.
But don't forget, at this time, Gu Ailing's identity is still a high school student, except for the competition, every Monday to Friday, you have to stay in school obediently to attend classes, review, exams.
It's a four-hour journey from your home in San Francisco to the training ground at Lake Tahoe. "I learned to do my homework, sleep, change clothes, and eat in the car."
Fortunately, she not only inherited her mother's athletic talent, but also inherited the bully gene. In order to sprint towards the Winter Olympic dream, she took the initiative to apply to the school to compress her four-year high school curriculum to three years.
"I do everything, I put 100% energy into it, I study hard when I study, and I focus on skiing when I ski." Relying on such an attitude, Gu Ailing successfully completed the "jump".
In last year's AMERICAN SAT test, Gu Ailing scored 1580 points, 20 points away from the full score of 1600, ranking 0.4% in the United States, knocking on the door of Stanford with real skills and becoming an alumnus of her mother Gu Yan.
This exam made my mother recall "thrilling".
The day before the exam, the plane was delayed, Gu Ailing did not arrive at the hotel until 11:30 p.m., and did not sleep long before going to the exam room in the dark the next morning. Because it rained and could not hit the car, Gu Ailing ran a kilometer in the heavy rain before taking the exam on time.
Gu Ailing's self-discipline has impressed many media reporters who have interviewed her. Unlike many young people who are keen to stay up late, Gu Ailing likes to sleep very much, no matter how busy she is with her studies or training, she sleeps enough for ten hours a day, which she regards as the secret of her success.
After returning to China, Gu Ailing's training, competitions, and business activities are fully arranged, and most of the time will be managed by her mother for her.
When her mother is not in China, Gu Ailing will look particularly tired. As a little girl who has just turned 18 years old, how to deal with intensive work, cope with pressure from all sides, and at the same time focus on training competitions, this is undoubtedly a huge challenge.
"I have three lives, a student, a skier, a fashion model, and now I'm balancing those three lives."
03
Balance skiing with modeling
"Confidence and health are beauty"
Gu Ailing rarely talks about her appearance, but her high appearance is obvious to all.
The size of 1 meter 70, coupled with the sunny and cheerful personality and the healthy temperament of athletes, has naturally become the object of invitation for many luxury brands and fashion magazines, and has gained countless top resources in the fashion circle in the past two years.
After signing an IMG agency, Gu Ailing became a classmate of Giselle Bunchen, Cuckoo and other supermodels, and became a professional model.
Gu Ailing appeared on the cover of Vogue, ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, appeared in the front row of Paris Fashion Week to watch the show, and even dressed in Chinese clothes to attend heavyweight fashion occasions such as met gala.
Her love of fashion has also been around for a long time. When I train in Europe this summer, I take a few days off to travel between Paris and Milan.
When she was 15 years old, she went to Paris Fashion Week to see the show, and she received an invitation from a rapper to attend an after party. "Mom definitely didn't agree, she was afraid of not being safe, I convinced her for a long time, and finally she went to the party with me, and in the end she was safe." 」
The aura of the fashion circle, Gu Ailing sees very clearly, not to satisfy his vanity, but to develop as a career, and even for the "main business" skiing is also helpful.
"Fashion helps me balance the pressure of my training, and being a model, like freestyle skiing, requires creativity, confidence, and the ability to learn to adapt." Gu Ailing said that these colorful attempts can stimulate their enthusiasm for life.
For beauty, Gu Ailing has her own understanding, "Strength, self-confidence, health, this is the 'beauty' I pay more attention to." ”
She said that she has seen many people around her who will dangerously diet and lose weight, just because they want to be thin and want to be beautiful, "three kilometers and five kilometers can't run, not sunburned at all, this is not beautiful, because it is unhealthy." ”
On her social media, Gu Ailing will show her multi-faceted nature, share her training experience with netizens, and also pop out the work tidbits of shooting fashion blockbusters.
In her videos, there are also many family warmths. For example, making dumplings with my grandmother, "When we are not in the Winter Olympics, we should make some dumplings, share our traditional culture, and let people around the world taste Chinese food." ”
Of course, what everyone is most looking forward to is that Gu Ailing can have an outstanding performance in the next Beijing Winter Olympic Games. That's what she's wanted since she was 8 years old.
Before the Bronze Mountain competition in the United States in December, Gu Ailing had actually saved enough Olympic points, and these games became her Olympic warm-up. Previously, she had revealed to the media that her current physical and mental state was very good, and this month's good results gave her more confidence.
I believe that in the Beijing Winter Olympics in February next year, Gu Ailing can bring us more surprises.
Text, Editor/Cardi C
Some of the materials come from CCTV News, Surging News, and New Weekly
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