Who is Eileen Gu, the second highest paid athlete in the world? Skier and model, Chinese and American

Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Emma Raducanu, Naomi Osaka, Aryna Sabalenka, Jessica Pegula, Venus Williams, Elena Rybakina, and Leylah Fernandez. Of the 10 highest-paid female athletes in the world, nine are tennis players. The millionaire prizes on the WTA circuit increase their income, and there are many companies interested in sponsoring them, more than in any other sport. The best golfer in the world, Nelly Korda, the iconic soccer player Megan Rapinoe, the leader of the WNBA champions, Candace Parker, and the legendary gymnast Simone Biles follow closely on the list made annually by Forbes, but they are left out of that Top 10. And then, who sneaks in among all the tennis players? Who earned more than $20 million like them in 2023? A freeskier.

One that? An acrobatic skier, a specialist in jumps and tricks, that is, an athlete in a young discipline, not very well known and with few practitioners. It is Eileen Gu, a double champion in the last Winter Olympic Games in Beijing 2022, a star that is impossible to define because she is a freeskier, yes, but also other things.

“She's very hard-working. It always amazes me how she combines her ski career with modeling, with her studies…. I think that if she has achieved so much popularity, it is thanks to her dedication,” says Thibault Magnin, a reference for freeskiing in Spain and a personal friend of Gu. And part of her success is explained like this: she combines ski slopes with fashion catwalks naturally. Before a competition in the Austrian Alps, she can fly to New York to participate in the Met Gala; Before a concentration in Switzerland, she can walk at Paris Fashion Week for Louis Vuitton.

Last year, according to Forbes itself, Gu received less than $100,000 in prizes – tennis player Swiatek almost $10 million – but earned $22 million in advertising, much more than any athlete in the world. Among her sponsors are Porsche, Victoria's Secret, Tiffany's, and the watchmaker IWC, and she has appeared on the cover of magazines such as Vogue. But her economic well-being does not respond only to her image, far from it: it also has a lot to do with geopolitics.

Excellent student, nothing controversial

Gu is American, born in San Francisco in 2003, learned to ski near Lake Tahoe and now studies Quantum Physics at Stanford University – with an excellent average – but she competes for China. Her mother, Yan Gu, who raised her alone, moved from China to the United States in the 1990s to pursue a master's degree in molecular biology and stayed there. At the age of 15, after having won a Junior World Cup as a Yankee, Eileen Gu decided to represent her family's country, and since then, she has lived on a line that is as fine as it is profitable. It has sponsors and media attention from both countries and, at the same time, it must measure her decisions, her steps, her words.

In the United States, the queen of the X Games, she is a regular on television, events, and campaigns, but she is also criticized for representing China, and certain positions are expected that do not arrive. For example, before the last Winter Olympics, she stopped an interview with The New York Times because they were going to ask her about Hong Kong or the disappearance of tennis player Peng Shuai. In China, where she is known as Gu Ailing, she is a mass idol, but her relationship with the country is inflated, and her statements are studied in detail.

«It is better for her to talk about certain topics; they are delicate. But I can say that in China, there is a ski boom thanks to her. There was a World Cup in December, and it was filled with people just to see her,” Magnin rightly points out. The recent Winter Olympic Games in Beijing and the figure of Gu have formed a fashion in the Asian country that can only be compared to the basketball boom 20 years ago led by Yao Ming.

Gu is the second highest-paid athlete but could soon become the first. Last year, in fact, she took advantage of an injury to elevate her career as a model – and take twice as many subjects at Stanford as she was supposed to – and now, back on the snow, she continues winning and winning and winning. «As a skier, she is very strong, she is very high, at another level. Her rivals are improving, but it will be difficult for them to beat her,” analyzes freeskiier Thibault Magnin about Eileen Gu, the skier who is many things at once.

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