The Paper's reporter Hu Jie
【Editor's Note】
On October 27, the Beijing Winter Olympics ushered in a 100-day countdown.
This is China's sincere invitation to the world, conveying the beautiful expectations of 1.4 billion Chinese people - riding the torch of the Beijing Winter Olympics, connecting Chinese civilization and the world, and rekindling the passion and dream of the Olympic Movement.
At the same time, as a "city of two Olympic Games", the Beijing Winter Olympics uphold the olympic concept of "green, shared, open and clean", and Chinese athletes are also working hard to achieve a breakthrough in China's ice and snow sports at their doorstep.
On this occasion, The Paper launched the "100 Days of The Beijing Winter Olympics" column to help you get a panoramic bird's eye view of the Winter Olympics.
Gu Ailing, who loves to laugh.
"Chinese freestyle skier Gu Ailing reports". This is a sentence posted by Gu Ailing on personal social media on June 8, 2019.
Today, Gu Ailing has become the hottest ice and snow athlete in China. Not only because of her achievements in freestyle skiing, but also because of her infinite possibilities.
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing will participate in three events: freestyle ski slope obstacle course, U-shaped track and big jump. Speaking of the goal of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing once said: "When I participate in any competition, the goal is to win the championship. ”
Fashion Girl Valley Ailing.
Born out of nowhere, someone else's child
Fractured right hand to participate in the Freestyle Ski World Championships, won 2 gold and 1 bronze in three days; graduated a year early in preparation for the Winter Olympics, sat (American college entrance examination) score only 20 points lower than the full score, admitted to Stanford University; 2020 Forbes China under 30 elite list, the youngest inductee; in 2021, he became the fourth Chinese athlete nominated for ESPY best athlete nomination after Yao Ming, Li Na and Feng Shanshan...
Ski geniuses, beauty school bullies, sports idols, fashion new favorites... These labels seem to be tailored for Gu Ailing, and they also make her a "child of others" in the crowd.
It is undeniable that Gu Ailing's talent in ice and snow projects is beyond ordinary people. At the age of 3, he was taken to the snow field by his mother, and a year later, Gu Ailing learned to grasp the board, the pole, the cat jump and other movements. Like her class speech at the age of 13, she said, "I think I'm a little different, I'm busy on the little ramp while kids my age are still crying and complaining." ”
At the 2021 X Games World Extreme Games, Gu Ailing participated in 3 competitions in less than 24 hours and won 2 gold and 1 bronze.
At the age of 7, Gu Ailing is the only girl in the professional ski team in the Lake Tahoe region, and a year later she began the journey of "fighting monsters and upgrading" - winning the National Junior Ski Championship at the age of 9; participating in the adult group competition at the age of 13; 14-year-old, including 50 championships including 9 National Championships...
At that time, the International Snow Federation said of her: "Gu Ailing wrote her name into the history of freestyle skiing for the first time, and there may be many more times in the future." ”
But according to her, "I used to be a full-time student, I had classes from Monday to Friday, and I might only have 65 days a year skiing." These words may sound a bit "Versailles" to others, but Gu Ailing said it very sincerely.
Gu Ailing's goal at the Beijing Winter Olympics is to win gold.
The Winter Olympics are no longer far away
Talented, is everyone's first impression of Gu Ailing. At the age of 13, he began to make a name for himself in the world arena, and in the past two years, he has played amazingly in international competitions and repeatedly made history:
2020 WinterGreen Olympics in Lausanne, Switzerland, two golds and one silver;
2019-2020 Freestyle Skiing World Cup Calgary, two golds in two days, the first freestyle skier in history to win the championship back-to-back in the same venue of the World Cup;
The 2021 X Games World Extreme Games, in less than 24 hours, participated in 3 competitions and won 2 gold and 1 bronze, rewriting the history of Chinese athletes without gold in this traditional event;
At the 2021 Freestyle Ski World Championships, Gu Ailing suffered a fracture of her right hand and a torn ligament in her thumb, but won 2 gold and one bronze in her first competition, becoming the first freestyle skier in history to win two gold and three medals at a single World Championships.
Today, she has earned enough points to qualify for the Freestyle Slope Obstacle Course, U-Shaped Track and Big Jump at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
If you can stand on the stage of the Winter Olympics in these three events, whether you can win the championship or not, Gu Ailing has already written a new history of China's snow sports.
Although she has always been considered an athlete who focuses on slope obstacle skills, Gu Ailing revealed in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that in the three Winter Olympic events she is going to participate in, she has the highest expectations for the results of the U-shaped venue.
"My favorite used to be the slope obstacles, but now I feel like I'm most looking forward to a U-shaped venue."
Currently, Gu Ailing is training in a glacier park at an altitude of 3,500 meters in Austria. In an interview with the surging news reporter before leaving, Gu Ailing also expressed his expectations for the Winter Olympics: "In my life, the Olympic Games are a very distant dream, like it will never happen. But now it feels like a very real thing. ”
Gu Ailing in the game.
Life, infinite possibilities
With the approaching of the Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing's life is more labeled by "athletes", but it has been out of the circle before the Winter Olympics, more from her infinite possibilities of life.
"I grew up saying I had three lives, as a normal student, as a skier, as a fashion model, and I'm balancing those three lives now." In the face of the surging news reporter, Gu Ailing once emphasized the change of his identity.
In addition to the Winter Olympics, she is also a fashion darling and a stapler. In order to realize her dream of participating in the Winter Olympics, she condensed the four-year high school curriculum into three years, studying while taking exams. In the final US SAT ("American College Entrance Examination"), her score was 1580 points, and her score was 1600, ranking in the top 0.4%.
Even more dramatically, the plane was delayed the day before the exam, and she didn't arrive at the hotel until 11:30 p.m., and the next morning she went to the exam room in the dark, but she couldn't book a car because of the rain. "In order to ensure that she arrived on time, Ailing ran a kilometer in the rain to the examination room and took the exam." Her mother, Gu Yan, revealed such a detail.
In terms of fashion, Gu Ailing was not only invited to participate in vogue, Elle Chinese edition and Harper's Bazaar magazine shooting, but even participated in Paris Fashion Week.
Like most girls who love beauty, she chases fashion and trends, and even if she wants to spend most of her time on training, she will not easily give up "beauty". She told the surging news reporter, "This time to europe to train, I will take a few days off, back and forth between Paris and Milan." ”
It is this multi-dimensional creativity that allows Gu Ailing to break the single circle of athletes.
In the face of new things, Gu Ailing seems to be tireless. She's looking forward to the future of college: "I can't wait to go to Stanford because I think it's going to be fun, meet a lot of new friends, and learn a lot of new things." ”
She also thought about the birthday gift of the 18-year-old coming-of-age ceremony. "I said I wanted to go skydiving on my 18th birthday, and she said, absolutely not! This is not acceptable! When you reach the age of 80 and then go skydiving, dangerous things can only choose the same! Although the idea was stopped by her mother, Gu Ailing was still full of curiosity about the future.
Regarding her Winter Olympic dream, it is not just "to participate in any competition goal is to be a champion". In her opinion, she prefers to take on a share of responsibility:
"If there are girls in China who fall in love with skiing because of me, or even change their lifestyle, I feel like I've reached my goal."
Editor-in-Charge: Ascendas
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang