On Set With Eileen Gu at The Boca Raton

SI Staff | 21 Hours Ago

Eileen Gu Video Interview: The Boca Raton /

Freestyle skier, Eileen Gu, became the youngest Olympic champion in the category at just 18 years old. During her 2022 Winter Games stint in Beijing, Gu made more history as the first freestyle skier to win three medals at one Olympic Games. We sat down with Gu on set at The Boca Raton to reflect on her legacy and this Sports Illustrated Swimsuit feature.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, it's Eileen Gu, and I'm on set with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2025.

My earliest memories of skiing, I would sa,y I was probably maybe four or five, and just skiing through the trees with my mom, powder skiing. Usually it would be up to my shoulders. As I got older in terms of free skiing, my first memories were being in this rowdy group of boys on the chairlift, starting from age eight or nine and just pushing one another every day.So if one guy learned a trick, then I had to learn it. And if I learned a trick, then everyone else had to learn it. And so just kind of keeping the progression moving throughout the day. 

Look, I wouldn't say I have the ideal body type for skiing in the sense that I'm way too tall. So if you think about kind of doing flips and think about gymnastics or think about figure skating, when you wanna flip and spin, it's easier to have a lower center of gravity. It's easier to be smaller. I am five nine, so that is not gonna be happening for me. But I think what it taught me was to embrace what you have. There's certain things that you can't really change about yourself, and so learning to adapt your style and learning to adapt your skiing to those kind of genetic or inherent factors that you might have, it produces a different kind of style and it imbues your craft with your own touch, and that's something that I think is really beautiful.

First of all. free skiing is a very male-dominated sport. I think the first time that I had girls on my team, I was around fourteen or fifteen. So from like eight to you know, thirteen, fourteen, I was the only girl on my team. So I definitely felt as though I stuck out a little bit and I spent most of that time trying to be a boy: like double XL neon orange hoodies, like Nike Elite socks, like just middle school boy was my aesthetic. I think that part of that was because I thought it was cool, and that's fine. But the other part I think was definitely trying to mask myself and trying to fit in and be more accepted. I just wanted to make friends, and I wanted to look like the other people in the industry, and for the most part, those were boys.

So, I think reconciling with my femininity, particularly when I turned fourteen, fifteen and started working in fashion more, was a pivotal step of my development. I think it helped me grow into myself and accept all the different parts of me that make me, me. 

The progression of women's skiing has just been skyrocketing in the last, you know, five years, ten years. It has been so inspiring to first watch it when I was younger, and then now be a part of it. It has made me really retrospective and made me introspective and thinking about, what is the legacy that I wanna contribute to this sport. And I think a big part of that really is inclusivity: Making girls feel as though there's a place for them and it's cool, culturally relevant, and something that they're not afraid to say yes to. I hope that someone can, you know, turn on the TV or turn on YouTube or watch me compete and be like, ‘Oh look, she looks just like me.’ You know? And the idea of, ‘this sport isn't for you,’ it doesn't even get in their head because the first time they're exposed to it is through someone who looks like them.

And that is a wrap on my SI 2025 swimsuit photo shoot.