The freestyle skier from La Plagne failed less than a point from the gold medal, behind Chinese star Eileen Gu and another big favorite in the freestyle skiing event. This is the fourth medal for France.
Scene of tears at the Beijing Games. Eileen Gu, presented before the start of the competitions as the Chinese star of the fortnight, struggles to hold back a sob in the arrival area of the big air. His third and last run, marked by an unreal jump, a double cork 1620, put his name at the top of the rankings. She is an Olympic champion. Tess Ledeux, beaten for the title by the tiny gap of 0.75 points, collapses in tears in the arms of the third, the Swiss Mathilde Gremaud. The Frenchwoman had come for the gold, she will leave with the silver.
Happy anyway? Disappointed to cry? Tess Ledeux no longer knows which feelings to turn to. Later, facing the media, she offers an uncertain face, divided between gray and blue. “I don’t have the words, I really skied my best todayshe slips. There were so many emotions. Losing the gold medal for so little, at the Olympics, hurts a little at the time. But the level was just incredible. I did not expect that. I’m very happy to have come second with what I brought today. I don’t think I’ve ever skied so well in my entire life. I can have no regrets.”
In Beijing, this Tuesday, February 8, the women’s big air was without possible competition the test where to show your little face, even hidden under a mask. IOC President Thomas Bach took his place in the front row of the meager audience. A sign. Above all, the cameras spotted Peng Shuai in the spans of the site. The Chinese player, who has become very visible for a few days, chatted with the German leader as an uncle and niece would do at the counter of a bar.
Eileen Gu goes all out
Thomas Bach and Peng Shuai had not come just to watch the big air final, a new event on the program of the Winter Games. Both had made the trip for Eileen Gu, the most recognizable face of Chinese winter sports. At 18, the young woman discovered the Olympic universe, but she moved there without giving the impression of looking for her bearings. Born in California, based in San Francisco, Eileen Gu likes to define herself as an athlete, student and “part-time model”. Advertisers love it. The public follows in procession each of its steps, on the tracks and outside. Nicknamed “Snow Princess”, Eileen Gu has 1.3 million subscribers to her Weibo account, the Chinese version of Twitter.
In Beijing, the Chinese took her time to draw her victory. After two runs, she was still pointing away from Tess Ledeux. On the structure installed in the heart of Beijing’s industrial wasteland, between chimneys, blast furnaces and cooling towers of a former steel factory, the Frenchwoman hit hard at the start of this final in three rounds by signing a “double cork 1620”, i.e. a rotation of four and a half turns, rewarded with 94.50 points. A feat that only one woman had already managed to place before this competition: herself, three weeks earlier during the winter X-Games in Aspen (United States). She did not weaken then by succeeding in a “switch left 1440”, this time four towers in the air, which earned her 93 points.
But the last descent of Eileen Gu extinguished the illusions of the Frenchwoman. The Chinese-American attempted, and succeeded, a 1620, a jump she had never tried before in competition. The jury praised the audacity. Then the young woman explained to the media, speaking in Mandarin with a hint of an American accent: “I had thought of trying it a few days before the Games, even if I had never yet risked it in an official event. But I made the decision only five minutes before the run. I actually called my mom after the second jump, she said, ”Don’t do it, you can do another 1440 to try for the silver medal”. But I don’t compete for that, to position myself in relation to others. I line up in competition to ski at 100%, to go to the end of my limits.
Then the Chinese unrolled with precise gestures the threads of her young existence, between studies in California, training in freestyle skiing and her budding career as a top model. She said she was the first student in her high school’s history to graduate early. She said she trained more than all of her national team partners, often until late in the evening. She said that she took advantage of the school holidays last summer to work as a model, sometimes eight to ten hours a day. Finally, she thanked China for all its efforts to organize the Winter Games in the midst of a health crisis. So young, Eileen Gu, but already so perfect.
Update : at 8:51 a.m., with more details on the course of the event.