Reporter | Qiao Qidi
Edit | Shi Yiying
Under the clear sky after the spring, the snow surface of the Beijing Shougang Grand Jumping Platform emits a dazzling light through direct sunlight.
At around 11:00 a.m. on February 8, 2022, the freestyle ski women's big jump final reached the third round, with France's Tess Ledeux, Switzerland's Mathilde Gremaud and China's Gu Ailing appearing in the last three rounds.
Before the final jump, Gu Ailing was in third place, at which point she had secured her podium.
But instead of following her mother's conservative advice, she sacrificed a trick that is currently the most difficult in the world, 1620. 94.50 points! After this skip, Gu Ailing overtook Tess Ludd and rose to the first place.
The race wasn't over, and Tess Ludd raised the difficulty again: Challenge 1800! The imperfection of the landing made Tess Ludd regret to win the silver medal. But this brave attempt is proving to the world that 1620 is by no means the end of female skiers.
After landing on the ground, Taisi looked a little frustrated, sitting on the ground and covering her face and crying. Greymored and Gu Ailing, who finished the race first, quickly stepped forward and half-knelt to comfort them. Three "post-00s" girls representing the top level of freestyle skiing today, enclosing a solid triangle.
The big jump is the shortest training time for Gu Ailing. In the case of many people vaguely worried about whether she can really hold up her expectations, her actual performance is beyond imagination.
Here, Gu Ailing shows us the atypical opening of the gap year ( gap year ) – winning the first freestyle ski jump gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympics.
Viewers may have noticed that Gu Ailing repeatedly made a drill action to stretch his body before the last departure. Because the left turn bi-weekly deflection axis turn 1620, she has never tried before in training and competition.
Later, talking about this action, Gu Ailing said that he did not come here to beat other athletes, but wanted to break his own boundaries, wanted to encourage more girls to break their boundaries, and let them feel 'if she can do it, then I can do it too'.
"In the face of fear, I will always be a hopeless romantic." Not long ago, Gu Ailing was invited to write for the New York Times, and she wrote at the end of the article.
Gu Ailing at the Winter Olympics. (Image source: Oriental IC)
In 1997, at the age of 17, Guo Dandan won the gold medal in freestyle skiing aerial skills at the World Cup freestyle skiing series in Australia, becoming China's first ski world champion.
Even in today's China, skiing is still strictly a niche sport.
The Winter Olympics, led by Gu Ailing, was formed in less than six years.
In June 2019, Gu Ailing announced her naturalization in China, becoming the first naturalized athlete on the Chinese ski team, and the name Eileen Gu began to appear frequently in front of people's eyes.
At that time, she wrote on Weibo: "I am Gu Ailing, a girl who loves skiing, and skiing gives me strength. I am proud to represent China at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing three years later. ”
In January 2020, the final of the freestyle skiing U-pool of the 3rd Winter Youth Olympics was held in Leysin, Switzerland, and Gu Ailing won the championship with 93.00 points, winning her first international gold medal for the Chinese team.
In order to catch up with the preparations for the Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing graduated from San Francisco University High School ahead of schedule.
At the end of 2020, she announced the good news of her admission to Stanford University, and in order to prepare for the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing chose to enroll in the fall of 2022.
The growth trajectory of Gu Ai Ling is like a genius cultivation template that is difficult to reproduce.
At the X Games World Extreme Games in January 2021, Gu Ailing picked up two gold and one bronze, becoming the first woman ever to win three medals in her X Games debut.
In March, Gu Ailing won 2 gold and 1 bronze in her first freestyle ski world championships, including gold medals in U-shaped pools and steeplechase skills, and bronze medals in the big jump event.
Since December 2021, Gu Ailing has won the championship six times in 36 days.
On January 8 this year, the final leg of the FIS Freestyle Ski U-Track World Cup was held in California, USA, and Gu Ailing continued to win the championship, winning all the races of the season.
On the evening of February 8, the Beijing Winter Olympics held an award ceremony for the freestyle ski jump. (Image source: Oriental IC)
"By the time she saw me do my first backflip, it was too late, and I was already in love!"
Gu Yan was the first person to take Gu Ailing to the snow field.
In an interview, Gu Ailing talked about the earliest contact with skiing: "My mother especially liked the skiing project, and took me to the ski resort at the age of 3 and put me in the ski school. She thinks I'm skating too slowly and hopes I can skate with her when I'm a few years later. ”
In front of the camera, her face is hard to hide her pride: "In a few years, I found out, how can I find out too fast!" When I was 8 years old, I came straight down from the top of the mountain because I didn't feel interesting. When I was 4 years old, I knew all about powder snow, woods, and cat jumping. My mom thought it was too dangerous, so she put me on a ski team in the hope that I would skate more slowly and safer. ”
When she joined the Northstar California Resort freestyle ski team at the age of 8, Gu Ailing was the only girl on the team.
Gu Ailing said that her mother did not know what freestyle skiing was at that time, and felt that it was not speed skating, so it must be safe. "It was too late when she saw me do my first backflip, I was already in love, and she supported it."
A year after joining the team, Gu Ailing won her first national championship.
It turns out that the mother's concerns can't stop her daughter's determination to love.
In the era when Gu Yan was exposed to skiing, Freestyle Skiing was still a very young sport.
In the United States in the 1960s, freestyle skiing originated here. In 1970, New Hampshire hosted the world's first freestyle skiing competition; in 1979, the FIA certified it as an official winter sport.
In 1992, at the Albertville Winter Olympics, freestyle skiing was first included in the Winter Olympics.
Gu Ailing posted a photo with her grandmother and mother on Weibo.
The role of female elders in the family had an important impact on Gu Ailing's growth.
In a previous interview with the South China Morning Post, Gu Ailing said that her mother and grandmother are the two most influential people in her life so far, "they are the definition of 'energetic women' itself, the ultimate model." ”
Gu Ailing added: "I learned from my grandmother her brave, competitive nature, and from my mother judgment and work ethic. My grandmother gave me the motivation and desire to win, and my mother gave me the tools to achieve it. ”
In advertising endorsements and magazine covers, Gu Ailing always shows a positive, firm and tough side. However, in the story fragments that record the behind-the-scenes training, we sometimes see her vulnerability, fear and collapse, and at these moments, almost without exception, her mother Gu Yan is present.
On the eve of the 2018 FIS Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding World Cup in China, she accidentally fell during training, and this fall knocked Gu Ailing unconscious.
"I can't remember anything." The fear of amnesia invaded, and Gu Ailing sat on the snow and cried, "Why are we in China now?" Gu Yan calmly talked to her from the side, asking about her injury: "Are you going to get that World Cup?" ”
The company of her mother undoubtedly gave Gu Ailing stable emotional support.
But more often than not, she needs to learn on her own how to deal with fear.
In that Article, published in The New York Times, Gu wrote that fear is actually a general term for three different feelings: excitement, uncertainty, and stress.
As an extreme athlete, Gu Ailing said that she did not ignore fear, but built a unique relationship with fear by cultivating a deep sense of self and conducting a thoughtful risk assessment.
"This work starts with figuration. Before I tried a new technique, I felt a tightening in my chest, which was between the bottom of my throat and the top of the diaphragm. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. As I climbed the huge take-off ramp, I imagined stretching my legs to maximize lift. I would then imagine my upper body twisting in the opposite direction I intended to rotate, generating torque before I let it bounce back in the other direction.
Now, in my consciousness, I am in a state of vacating... My ears treat the wind like a song, and every 360-degree spin provides a beat to my action music... There is an unstable balance between my safe execution of skills and the anticipation of unpredictable excitement. I've heard that this state is called entering the zone. Last fall, when I became the first female doubleboarder in history to complete the Double Cork 1440 (two weeks of front flips plus four weeks of rotation), I was sure I had been to this place. ”
Gu Ailing appeared on the cover of a fashion magazine. (Source: Weibo @VOGUEplus)
Mixed-race face, black hair, a mouth shape that retains the English pronunciation but speaks Mandarin in Beijing... These formed a contrast of no more and no less in Gu Ailing's body.
Since 2019, commercial endorsements and filming invitations have followed her international appearances, and now the list continues to grow.
Swiss high-end ski label Action Skis signed Gu Ailing as a spokesperson in 2019 and launched the signature skis.
In January 2020, the domestic sports brand ANTA Sports officially announced the signing of a contract with Gu Ailing.
In addition, Gu Ailing's endorsement contracts include energy drink Redbull, sports glasses Oakley, headphone Beats by Dre, and dairy brand Mengniu.
Even during last year's injury recovery and preparation, Gu Ailing did not stay in place, but "efficiently" won multiple endorsements.
On June 14, 2021, luxury jewelry brand Tiffany official Xuangu Ailing became the global spokesperson.
On June 18, fashion lingerie brand Victoria's Secret officially announced seven cross-disciplinary brand ambassadors, with Gu Ailing as the spokesperson; on August 11, swiss watch brand IWC announced Gu Ailing as the brand ambassador; on August 17, bank of China announced the signing of Gu Ailing as the image spokesperson.
In September, on the day of his 18th birthday, Gu Ailing got two endorsements from Cadillac Cars and Luckin Coffee.
Under the mainstream standards, 18-year-old Gu Ailing is almost full of human rank.
Gu Ailing, who has a jumpy personality and is eccentric, never shy away from showing confidence and ambition to the outside world, and is keen to promote his beloved skiing through the halo.
Earlier this year, a fan asked her on social media: "What do you think got you into Stanford?" Gu Ailing replied: "I would like to say that it is my flawless, amazing, wonderful, and perfect paper, which is about the evolution and construction of femininity and strength, but it may be mainly because of my SAT scores and GPA." ”
Public opinion has never lacked the ability to create gods, but it is often difficult for "Gods" to get along after they step down from the altar.
But it is difficult to see these baggage in Gu Ailing's body. She confessed that she was not afraid of failure. "Skiing is not what it's like to go to war every day. Skiing is meant to be flying, it's fun, it's about creating. Go out every day under the sun and enjoy the feeling of being in the air with your friends in the beautiful nature. ”
Next, Gu Ailing will transfer to Zhangjiakou Division and continue to participate in the competition of U-shaped field skills and slope obstacle skills.
If you go back to the most primitive question again, who is Gu Ailing?
In addition to the sticky label of "genius ski girl" and the self-deprecating praise of "other people's children", it may be said that she is just a person who likes to fly on the snow.
Just as the charm of freestyle skiing itself lies in unlocking the infinite possibilities of the action library, Gu Ailing is still unlocking more identities in life.
After all, Gu Ailing, who was born on the west coast of the United States, plays Freestyle.