Eileen Gu has finished it but once more, with one other unimaginable halfpipe victory on the FIS Freeski World Cup happening at Copper Mountain, Colorado, from December 19-21. The 21-year-old skier’s seventeenth World Cup victory awarded her the document for many FIS Freeski World Cup wins in historical past. Up till now, Gu was tied for that honor with France’s Tess Ledeux at 16. The 2 ladies managed to overhaul Norway’s Chicken Ruud final season, who held the title till then with 14 World Cup victories.
Competing towards a subject of proficient athletes, Gu delivered a rating of 90.50 on her first run, which was simply sufficient to beat out opponents Zoe Atkin with a rating of 89.75 and Cassie Sharpe with a rating of 89.00. Gu confirmed off difficult, technical methods akin to a proper 900 Buick, a left 900 Japan, and an alley-oop 360 lead tail. Her flawless execution and inventive strains highlighted her signature mix of energy, grace, and technical talent.
Gu took a tough crash on her third run victory lap however fortunately sustained no accidents. “It’s a aggressive sport and typically issues don’t go precisely as deliberate, however it’s all about competitors and doing the most effective which you could on the day and competing with everybody,” Gu mentioned. “So I’m actually comfortable to get my seventeenth win, 14th (Halfpipe win) in a row.” Gu additionally advised a reporter for FIS that “the extent of competitors in Saturday’s closing had pushed everybody within the ladies’s subject.”
Gu’s victory at Copper Mountain marks her third consecutive Halfpipe win this season and brings her whole Halfpipe World Cup victories to 14, additional cementing her legacy as an extremely profitable athlete within the self-discipline. Her 17 FIS World Cup wins place her among the many most achieved Freestyle skiers ever, persevering with to encourage athletes and skiers alike worldwide. She additionally has gained three Olympic medals—two gold for Halfpipe and Huge Air and one silver in Slopestyle—making her the defending Freeski champion going into the 2026 Olympics. Gu stays the chief within the Halfpipe World Cup standings with 300 factors, a commanding place because the season progresses. Her 14th Halfpipe World Cup victory since 2020 additionally makes her the all-time chief for Halfpipe wins throughout males’s and girls’s competitors.
In addition to snowboarding, Gu can also be a full-time scholar learning quantum physics at Stanford College and is at the moment taking an trade time period at Oxford. She can also be a mannequin with a full-fledged vogue profession and attends prestigious occasions such because the Met Gala and Paris Vogue Week. With a lot on her plate, she nonetheless finds a strategy to stability the completely different facets of her life and compete at prime stage. Other than snowboarding, Gu states that she has “at all times valued schooling deeply. A lot of individuals round me–different athletes, advisors, mentors, my mother–all inform me to take break day college, however I really feel like being an educational is an integral a part of who I’m, in order that’s why I’ve remained a full-time scholar all through my life.” Time Journal named her as one of many High 100 Most Influential Folks, and Forbes named her the world’s second-highest-paid feminine athlete, including to the lengthy record of Gu’s accomplishments.
After this competitors in Copper Mountain, the long-lasting X Video games will happen in January 2025 at Aspen, Colorado. The X Video games carry collectively a number of the most nicely acknowledged athletes of all time, to compete towards one another in 4 classes: Halfpipe, Slopestyle, Huge Air, and the newly coveted Knuckle Huck. This thrilling occasion will kick off the competitors season of 2025, giving Gu one other likelihood to indicate off her highly effective and sleek snowboarding.
