Having won two golds and a silver, US-born freestyle skier Eileen Gu (Gu Ailing) has been the most-talked-about athlete at the just-concluded Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
With freeskier Gu Ailing winning gold medal at the women s halfpipe on Friday, Team China has amassed a record of eight gold medals at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, three more than the previous record of five at Sochi 2014; while for world winter sports, a bigger success is 1.4 billion people watching the Games, many for the first time, as their growing interest in the events, athletes and mascots could change the global landscape of winter sports.
Experts have diverging opinions about whether Chinese champion Eileen Gu’s star power will translate into more skiers when China’s Olympic fever has died down.