In the freestyle skiing field of the Beijing Winter Olympics where international snow circle experts gather, the most concerned nature of the Chinese people is the 3 small competitions participated in by super nova Gu Ailing: U-shaped track skills, slope obstacle skills, and large jumping platforms, which all require athletes to play a variety of "flower work", the action is extremely difficult and quite ornamental; and for chinese audiences, what is more "exciting" is that in these 3 events, Gu Ailing will face powerful opponents, and the excitement of the game is self-evident.
The freestyle skier who aims to win gold is naturally not only Gu Ailing alone - Kathy Sharp, Rachel Kaak, Zoe Atkin, Zhang Kexin, Tess Ludd, Kelly Hildaru, Mathilde Greymode ... These talented and daring girls have never been afraid to meet the challenge, and have a vigorous vitality - from these "big heroines" in the skiing world, people can truly feel the unique charm of female sports idols.
Gu Ailing
Kelly Hildaru
Kathy Sharp
Mathilde Greymound
Gu Ailing: "Frog Princess" transforms into Shuangwen Heroine
On June 6, 2019, Gu Ailing, who was only 16 years old at the time, posted through personal social media: "Chinese freestyle skier Gu Ailing registered" - she was born in the United States and officially became a Chinese citizen.
Before that, she came from a family where her father was American and her mother Gu Yan was a native of Beijing, and she was already a star who won awards in ski competitions. Under the enlightenment of her mother, who was once a ski instructor, 3-year-old Gu Ailing began to practice skiing, and then, "accidentally created a professional skier" - at the age of 4, she can already freely shuttle through the coniferous forest, leap over a small snowdrift, and even complete professional actions such as cat jumping.
At the age of 8, "flying straight down" from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain could not satisfy Gu Ailing. Gu Yan then sent her daughter to a professional freestyle ski team. At the age of 9, Gu Ailing began to participate in ski competitions and won the national junior ski championship; and a year ago, she did not even have any concept of freestyle skiing, only that "it is not speed skating, it is not so dangerous".
Less than 10 years old, Gu Ailing has begun the life of a skier who opens and hangs; at the age of 13, she began to participate in adult competitions, and at the age of 14, she won more than 50 championships of all sizes, including 9 national championships... and what really made her "out of the circle" was to win the gold medal in the WOMEN's steeplechase skills project of the FIS World Cup in early 2019 - a few months later, she gave up her good results of ranking at the top of the annual rankings of the International Snow Federation, gave up the glory of becoming an American skier, and "registered" as a Chinese athlete.
After returning to China, Gu Ailing is even more riding in the world of freestyle skiing: in 2 years, he won 12 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze on behalf of China. At the 2021 X Games, Gu Ailing represented China in the freestyle ski super U-shaped track and slope obstacle course champion and the third place in the big jump event, the first athlete in history to win 2 gold and 1 bronze in the first time to participate in the X Games, and the first time that a Chinese athlete won the championship in the event. At the 2021 Freestyle Ski World Championships, Gu Ailing wore protective gloves in the case of a fracture of her right hand and a torn thumb ligament, and won the championship of the women's U-shaped field event with high scores, which was her first world championship and the first world championship of Chinese athletes in this event; Gu Ailing, who competed in the World Championships for the first time, also won 1 gold and 1 bronze in the slope obstacle course and big jumping competition, creating the best result in the history of Chinese athletes in these 3 events - Gu Ailing with her determination and perseverance, It is filling the historical gap for China's ice and snow sports.
On March 10, 2021, the United States, on the first day of the 2021 Freestyle Ski World Championships, Gu Ailing competed.
Since the start of the new season on December 5, 2021, Gu Ailing has been invincible in the U-shaped field event, winning 5 gold in 37 days, especially at the Mammoth Mountain Station in the United States, where she won the championship with a super high score of 97.50 points, and the International Skating Federation even issued a special article calling her play "the most perfect performance in the history of the women's U-pool competition so far".
On January 9, 2022, the women's U-shaped track skills final of the 2021-22 Freestyle Skiing World Cup at Mammoth Mountain Station in the United States, Gu Ailing won the championship. Gu Ailing won all four U-shaped field skills competitions this season, winning the crystal ball symbolizing the season championship.
Gu Ailing, who calls herself the "Frog Princess", is gradually regarded by the Chinese as a "genius girl" in the freestyle skiing world; but she says that she has "only 0.1% of her ski talent" - behind this 0.1% of her ski talent, Gu Ailing has poured all her love for skiing. This love made her resist the tedium of training and the pain of injuries: clavicle fracture, concussion, broken thumb ligament, fracture, even commonplace for her, but she never gave up. More often, the training lasted from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the time was tight, and she often had to eat on the cable car of the ski resort, and below was the slowly passing snow, which she did not have time to appreciate, because in less than a few minutes, she would be back in the snow.
Of course, Gu Ailing's life is not only skiing, "I have a lot of things I want to do, but I don't know which hobby to focus on, I think things are faster, what I can do now is to be a good young person." While this young man has a rich life, being admitted to Stanford University and winning dozens of gold medals in ski competitions, Gu Ailing has also been favored by fashion brands in recent years: she was officially announced by Tiffany as a global spokesperson, won the title of IWC brand ambassador, became a close friend of Estée Lauder's Asia Pacific brand, and appeared on the cover of fashion magazines many times, while this heroine is just 18 years old - she is the real "cool woman".
Gu Ailing signed an official partner of the Beijing Winter Olympics, ANTA, as a brand spokesperson, and her healthy and sunny advertising image appeared on The Pedestrian Street of Nanjing Road in Shanghai.
Gu Ailing, who speaks fluent Beijing Mandarin and promises to be a Beijing chick who grew up in a hutong, admits that "the most important thing in life for me is to find what I want to do and then enjoy it." She wants to be a bridge, a bridge between sports and people, because "sports are the common language of the whole world" - as Time magazine wrote, "she hopes that when she arrives in Beijing, the world's focus will be on sports, hoping that sports can make the world more united and stronger."
Kathy Sharp: Proud of yourself
The U-shaped track skills event is not exclusive to the young "little farts", and Pyeongchang Winter Olympic champion and 29-year-old Canadian "veteran" Cassie Sharpe is still the king of difficulty in this project.
Born into a family of winter sports in Comos, British Columbia, Vancouver Island, Canada, Sharp began to learn to ski with his brothers at the age of 11 and gradually fell in love with freestyle skiing, especially the sport of U-shaped track skills.
In 2004, his parents asked Sharp to compete in "Bumps and Jumps" in Mount Washington. She also competed in a variety of competitions in snow skills, aerial skills and slope obstacle courses in her early years, until after winning her first U-shaped skills project in 2012, she began to focus more on training and competitions in U-shaped skills. Since being drafted to the Canadian national team in 2014, Sharp has been sitting on the rocket ship leading to superstardom.
In 2015, Sharp won the silver medal in the U-shaped skill event at the FIS World Championships, announcing her official entry into the world sporting event. She later said of her training: "I did a great job in the final round, showing all the results of my usual hard work. Before coming, we had a crazy training camp in Calgary and my coaches were brilliant, they made me a better skier in 1 week, thanks to them. And the World Championships and X Games slots collided, so the silver medal made some people question her abilities even more: "At that time, every interview I gave was like 'the top 8 girls are not here, they're in X Games' situation - which really makes me angry. So much so that in the next game, I had to show them how I could get the silver medal. ”
Sharp's "anger" didn't last long, and a few weeks later, in Tignes, France, she won the gold medal at the 2014-15 FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup.
In Sharp's glorious and difficult career, he has also been plagued by injuries many times. In December 2015, without warning, even Sharp thought it was just a muscle spasm – she had a stress fracture in her back, but in February 2016, she wore a protective harness and won the X Games gold medal. In the World Cup qualifying match in Tignes, France, Sharp broke his thumb. She tied her thumb and became the first female athlete to perform a 720-degree deflection rotation during the race; only after the game did she undergo ligament connection surgery and remove a broken bone from her thumb.
At this stage, Sharp is ready to compete with the best players, adding more skill in training and competition. Since winning the first Winter X Games gold medal in the U-shaped track event in 2016, Sharp has looked up to her idol, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke, who has competed in four consecutive editions: 2018 third place, 2019 champion, 2020 third place, 2021 runner-up ... especially in 2018, Sharp shocked the world at the U-shaped track race at the PyeongChang Olympics – in her first Olympic trip, She won the gold medal.
Kathy Sharp won the U-Shaped Venue Skills Competition at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics
Subsequently, Sharp won the World Cup U-Shaped Venue Skills Competition in the 2017-18 season, reaching 329 points in the season and winning the World Cup Crystal Ball Trophy. "I wanted the crystal ball so much that I went to France to play. Some of the contestants looked at me with a real surprise: 'Wow, I'm really surprised you're here.' You just won an Olympic gold medal, what are you doing here? Or 'you won the Olympics, you should go take a break' – I thought, why shouldn't I be here? This is not even a problem in my opinion. ”
After Sharp won the championship, her parents were proud and joyful.
On March 10, 2018, Sharp couldn't help but feel excited when she heard that a trail in Mount Washington, USA, was named after her.
With this competitive attitude and unshaken ambition, it's hard to imagine that Sharp's dominance in the U-Shaped Venue Skills event will quickly disappear, but she is very clear about her goals: "I will go to Beijing as a gold medalist, but I have accepted the fact that I may not leave as a gold medalist." 」 Sharp, who has the confidence to be on the podium in Beijing, wants to do the best he can, then go home and keep being himself — "I just want to keep everything in the right shape and make myself proud of myself, no matter what the outcome."
Kelly Hildaru: Don't just focus on achieving your goals
In the slope obstacle course competition, Gu Ailing faces obviously more opponents than U-shaped venues - facing Kelly Sildaru, Gu Ailing has almost no experience in defeating opponents: at the Youth Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing lost to her; and this season's World Cup sub-station, Gu Ailing is also a win; in the World Cup final, Gu Ailing scored a high score of 91 points. Hildaru gave her a staggering 93.75 points so that she could only taste the taste of runner-up again... but did you know that this Estonian freestyle skiing genius born in 2002 was first discovered on YouTube?
13-year-old Kelly Hildaru (second from right) frolicks with the team
Hildaru and his brother
Estonians have always favored winter sports – what could be better than turning on the TV and cheering on to fellow Estonians in the dark winter? If the weather is right, they can even ski a few laps on their own – so it's not hard to understand that Estonians' winter sport-seekers Kristina Šmigun-Vähi, Andrus Veerpalu and Jaak Mae are not incomprehensible.
Today, the void behind the retirement of these sports stars has been filled by a girl who has just turned 20 – 5-time X Games champion, World Championship champion and Winter Youth Olympic champion Kelly Hildaru is currently the most popular athlete in her home country.
Unlike other rising sports stars, Hildaru's family has no sports factor. When she was 2 years old, her father, Tony, took advantage of the spring sale at the local Giacomelli sports store to buy her some freestyle skis. These things sparked little Hildaru's curiosity, and it wasn't long before she began learning to ski.
Four years later, hildaru, 6, competed in her first race; she began training in the system at the age of 9 when a YouTube video about her skiing went viral in Estonia. Since then, her life has been filled with professional competition, systematic training, and constant travel. "When people are standing around U-shaped pools and you fly over their heads, it's scary, but it's also fun." Hildaru later told the media about her excitement at first encountering U-shaped pools.
In 2015, she won first place in the Big Jump, Slope Obstacle Course and U-Shaped Track Skills events at the Sony Snow Crown Competition. That same year, she also won first place in the Whitewater Tour in Colorado, USA. NBC praised her performance for "breaking the ceiling of women's steeplechase skills and raising the standard of competition in the sport." In 2016, Hildaru became the youngest gold medalist in the X Games event with his superb skills and perfect play in the slope skills event.
From 2016 to 2020, hildaru was invincible on various X Games and Whitewater Tour; after winning the 2017 FIS Freestyle Ski World Championships in Switzerland, hildaru ranked first in the slope obstacle course at the FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup in New Zealand. At the same time, she became the first female athlete to use the reverse three-and-a-half-week grab (a Switch 1260° Mute and a 1440°) in the competition. Although she was seen as one of the strong contenders for the gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, she was unable to compete due to a knee injury and did not win her first Olympic gold medal until the Youth Winter Olympics two years later.
On January 18, 2020, Lausanne, Switzerland, the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics freestyle ski slope obstacle course event, Hildaru won the gold, Gu Ailing won the silver.
In X Games 2019, 16-year-old Hildaru won gold, silver and bronze medals in three events: slope obstacle course skills, U-shaped track skills and big jump, which is an unprecedented record in the history of skiing competitions. Little Hildaru makes the country of Estonia shine in the ski arena.
On January 10, 2022, in the final of the women's steeplechase at mammoth Mountain Station in the United States in the 2021-22 freestyle skiing world, Hildaru won the championship with 93.75 points, which naturally made all the eyes of the ski world focus on the performance of the talented girl at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Swedish skier Emma Dahlström, A swiss skier and gold medalist at X Games, said of Hildaru that she was an "inspired, fun-looking person" who believed she would take women's freestyle skiing to the next level.
On 20 November 2021, the 2021–22 Freestyle Slope Steeplechase World Cup in Stubai ended with Hildaru from Estonia and Bilk Rudd from Norway winning the women's and men's divisions respectively.
Although the scandal of father Tonis's alleged domestic violence and embezzlement of tournament prize money has been raging since 2017, it has not disturbed Hildaru's daily matches and training. As a sports star discovered and mined on YouTube, Hildaru naturally plays with various social media and becomes an Internet celebrity - she updates her life and training routine on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube; like most teenagers, she also likes TikTok and publishes many of her own sports videos on it; Hildaru in social media loves nature, is close to the sea, and prefers horseback riding and diving , surfing, skateboarding, outdoor running, hiking, cycling... the hobbies are quite extensive. "Believe in yourself and don't just focus on achieving your goals. It's a journey that will take you to your destination. So, enjoy the journey! When the media asked her to give advice to those who wanted to succeed in sport, Hildaru replied.
Hildaru often shares his daily life on social media
Mathilde Grimaud: "Technique is like a painting"
As a new event of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the freestyle ski jump is extremely ornamental – athletes have to slide down a nearly 50-meter-high slope and throw themselves into the sky by inertia at the end of the slope, in the process, athletes can perform dexterous and spectacular stunts. The sport is the perfect combination of movement, talent and style, and athletes invent movements and push their limits to become fashion pioneers.
The big jumping event has always been a sub-event of Gu Ailing, and at the World Cup in December 2021, Gu Ailing completed a two-week flip of 1440 degrees; and the "jump king" Mathilde Gremaud (Switzerland) completed the super difficult action of backlashing before the two weeks of backlash 1440 degrees in September 2020 and January 2021.
Born in 2000, Greymored, like Kelly Hildaru, began skiing at the age of 2 under the influence of her father. She made her World Cup debut in 2016 and won gold in the big jump event at the X Games in Oslo, Norway in 2017, while making X Games' project history – becoming the first female athlete to score a perfect score of 50.
Mathilde Greymound's poster for a fashion magazine
But during the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Greymored wasn't seen as a hit on the podium — she fell and injured in training and was hit on the head so badly that she lost her memory temporarily; but she soon miraculously recovered and won a silver medal in the slope obstacle course, with her teammate Sarah Hoeflin narrowly beating her by 3 points. "If someone has to walk ahead of me, it's Sarah." Recalling the important race, Greymould said, "It's a pleasure to share the podium with those around you".
However, 4 years later, in 2022, the situation is completely different. On February 7, at the first Olympic women's freestyle ski jumping competition held in Beijing's Shijingshan Shougang Park, Greymore, as the champion of the X Games big jump event in 2017, 2019 and 2021, will strive to overcome the pressure and challenge. As more and more female athletes try and use incredible tricks in the sport of big jumping, Greymored realizes that she may not be the only one who can score 14 points or more at the Olympics.
On March 8, 2020, at the 2020 World Extreme Games in Norway, Greymored finished second in the freestyle slope obstacle course.
Grimaud finished at the women's qualifiers for the 2021-22 Freestyle Slope Steeplechase World Cup in Stubai, Austria.
All she wanted to do was indulge in the snow, or more accurately, in the air, to make new techniques more and more common in sports. "Of course there are some rules for the big jump, you have to turn left or right, use different axes... but it's so free that you can do whatever you want." Greymored said the sport offers the freedom and possibilities that allow her to overcome any limitations.
"I always have a lot of dreams and plans, but preparing for the Olympics is definitely a big deal. Obviously, stress and expectation are a part of every athlete's life, but it's important for me not to always think about it and to focus more on the fun of the sport and the enjoyment it brings. Greymore said.
Greymored, who often gets inspiration and ideas from skateboarders on Instagram, is very addicted to skateboarding and cycling in addition to freestyle skiing. "I compare the technique of freestyle ski jumping to a painting. Just like when a lot of paintings are first shown, people say with less certainty, 'This is a good painting...,' and then 10 years later, people say, 'Oh yeah!' That's a great painting! 'The big jump technique is very similar to this situation – I think it always takes 1 or 2 months or even a season to get people to notice the peculiarities of a certain technique. As for the goal of competing in the Winter Olympics again, Greymald said in a low profile, just hoping to win another Olympic medal.
What about colors?
"As long as it's not 4th, everything is fine!" She was joking.
Greymore rides a mountain bike