ON THE LINE
EILEEN GU GOT INTO EXTREME SPORTS because of an overprotective mother.
The older Gu hated seeing her daughter plunge down California’s Tahoe ski slopes in a furious blur, so she enrolled the 8-year-old in free-skiing school, not knowing exactly what it entailed but confident that anything would be safer than racing. Little did she know that she would one day be watching her child perform death-defying flips, spins and jumps instead. But that comes with the territory when your daughter is one of the sport’s top stars, with golds and podium finishes at X Games and World Cups to her name.
“I’ve probably been an adrenaline junkie from day one,” laughs the younger Gu, who is still just 18 years old.
In February, that adrenaline will be taking her all the way to the Winter Olympics in Beijing. It’s where her mom was born and a place she visited regularly during childhood, her fluent Mandarin betraying the Chinese capital’s distinctive twang. These will be Gu’s first Games and, unusually, she is entered in all three free-skiing disciplines: half-pipe, big air and slopestyle.
Internationally, Gu competes for China, where she is nicknamed “Snow Princess,” and has modeled for the local editions of and Professionally, she is part of the star-studded Red Bull team and in December became the first woman to land a double-cork 1440 in
