Eileen Gu arrived a few minutes late to her celebratory press conference on Sunday, first having to address a deeply personal matter.
The 22-year-old Gu — American-born but competing for her mother’s homeland of China — learned that her grandmother, Guozhen Feng, had passed away, shortly after she captured a record-breaking third Olympic gold medal in freeskiing.
“She was a steamship,” Gu told reporters while fighting through tears. “This woman commanded life, and she grabbed it by the reins, and she made it into what she wanted it to be.”
Gu explained that she looked up to her grandmother “immensely,” often taking pages from her book in her approach to skiing and life at large.
“She inspired me so much,” Gu said. “The last time I saw her before I came to the Olympics, she was very sick, so I knew that this was a possibility. I didn’t promise her that I was going to win, but I did promise her that I was going to be brave. She’s been brave.”
On Sunday, Gu delivered on her promise — and then some.
She successfully defended her Olympic ski halfpipe title to win her third gold medal — and sixth overall medal in six events over her Winter Olympics career, already the most decorated freeskier in the sport’s short history.
“I’m really happy that I was able to uphold that [promise},” she said, “and hopefully I made her proud.”
Gu also won two silver medals at the Milan Cortina Games, to go along with a pair of golds and a silver from the Beijing Games in 2022.