Time.news – Two gold medals in the half pipe and in the Big air, and a third elusive for a handful of tenths in the slopestyle, where she took silver: the Beijing Olympics consecrated 18-year-old Eileen ‘Eiling’ Gu as a star emerging freestyle.
An impeccable second run in her favorite discipline was enough to reach the top step of the podium in the ‘half tube’ in front of the Olympic champion, Canadian Cassie Sharpe, and the other Canadian Rachael Karker. Then the lap of honor in the jubilation of the home fans.
The ‘snow princess’ has become the new heroine of both worlds: born and raised in San Francisco in 2019 she decided to represent the country of her mother, Chinese, at the Games, becoming the most iconic character of the representative of China, with over 1 , 3 million followers on the main social platforms.
“They were the most beautiful and intense two weeks of my life, they changed it forever”, he commented after the new venture. By now Gu is a character that goes beyond sport, she is also a model for Victoria’s Secret, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany and Gucci, a character who grew up in the West but that the Chinese feel like them, also for his excellent spoken Mandarin.
His is a universal message that goes beyond the nations and the US-China rivalry, to the point that it is not even known whether he has taken Chinese citizenship, in theory it cannot be combined with that of the United States. “We are not here to push the borders of our countries further, but those of human capacities”, said Gu, “to share cultures, learn from each other and make friends”.