All that was missing in Eileen Gu’s Olympic mantle was a gold medal in the lone freeskiing event, slopestyle, that she didn’t win four years ago in Beijing. On Feb. 9, the third day of full Olympic competition, the American-born freestyle superstar who represents China very nearly got it in Livigno, Italy.
But she’ll have to settle for another slopestyle silver, as Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud landed an impressive series of jumps at the bottom of the course—and took advantage of Gu’s mishaps at the top—to win her second straight Olympic gold medal in the event. The two most dominant women in slopestyle delivered a thrilling theater for the fans at the Livigno Snow Park, and for a viewing audience around the world; Gremaud, now the only back-to-back slopestyle skiing winner in Olympic history, edged Gu by a mere .38 points in the judging.
While Gu won’t one-up her Beijing performance and become the first action-sports athlete to ever win three gold medals at a single Winter Olympics, she still has a strong chance to write Olympic history. Gu won gold in both big air and halfpipe freeskiing in Beijing. If she can repeat just one of those performances in Livigno, in the big air final on Feb. 16 or the halfpipe final on Feb. 21, she’d own three career Olympic golds. Shaun White is the only other winter action athlete with three golds at the Games, and he needed a dozen years to win that haul; Gu would do it in four.
Read More: ‘I Don’t Believe in Limits.’ How Eileen Gu Became Freestyle Skiing’s Biggest Star
Her day got off to a rather inauspicious start, as Gu crashed twice in warm-ups. But the Stanford international-relations major, who plans on returning to school as a junior after the Games, put those mistakes…
