'I have met my goal' - Beijing poster girl Eileen Gu happy to influence a new generation

Eileen Gu says she’s achieved her ambition to inspire Chinese youngsters through her success at the Winter Olympics. The 18-year-old has picked up two medals in Beijing, taking gold in the freestyle skiing big air event, before coming second to land silver in the slopestyle.

Ad/> Gu was born in the United States but in 2019 she chose to represent China in competition. /> Beijing 2022‘Nails it!’ – 17-year-old Muir ‘showed the world’ in slopestyle final3 HOURS AGO Gremaud wins slopestyle gold as Gu claims silver, Team GB duo finish inside top 10 Gu breaks the internet with Olympic gold for China Beijing 2022 Olympic Games: Schedule, big names, key events and more Her mother moved from China to the US after graduating from Peking University and studied for an MBA qualification at Stanford, where she met Gu’s father.

Speaking about her reasons for switching allegiance, the double medallist said, «I chose to ski for China because there's this massive opportunity to spread the sport to people who haven't even heard of it before. And honestly, I have met my goal.

There are 300 million people on snow, so to have even influenced a tiny fraction of that makes me immensely proud.” Gu has in many ways become the poster girl of the Olympics, not just through her success on the slopes, but she quite literally has her face plastered on posters throughout Beijing advertising one of the country’s big coffee companies. /> The teenager wants to use her profile productively, saying: “I feel as though I use my voice as much as I can in topics that are relevant and personal to myself and targeted towards people who are willing to listen to me.

And that being said, I'm also a teenage girl, so I do my best to make the world a better place. And