With all eyes on the American-born Chinese freestyle skiing phenom at the 2022 Olympics, Irene Gu knew she needed to get bigger if she wanted to take home a gold medal in her first competition, big air.
So for her final run, she decided to try a double cork 1620, which involves two rotations off-axis and four-and-a-half rotations in the air. This was a stunt she had never tried in practice.
“My whole thing was that everything was upside down,” she explained to Time magazine in January 2026. “Because if I land, I win the Olympics. If I don’t land, I will go down in history as the first person to attempt this trick in these conditions. This decision makes me very proud and will live with me forever.”
And winning her first gold medal in the spin, another in the halfpipe, and a runner-up in the slopestyle was just the starting point for the Stanford International Studies student.
“Competitively, the numbers say I’m the best freeskier of all time,” the 20-time World Cup champion told Time magazine.
And trust her running the data. She admits that in her sport, “trying too hard isn’t the coolest thing,” but she’s “absolutely unapologetic” about giving it your all, studying the precise momentum and pivot needed to pull off every trick. “That’s the fun part for me,” she explained. “It’s very addictive. I’m completely hooked.”
