Olympics 2022 -- Freeski star Eileen Gu's delicate balancing act between China and the U.S.

EILEEN GU THRUSTS her fists into the sky, ski poles dangling from her wrists, as she skis to a stop at the base of the Dew Tour halfpipe in Copper Mountain, Colorado. Her second-run score of 96 flashes on the outdoor monitor and the small crowd gathered on this bitter December morning erupts in support. Gu leads the event by nearly three points but isn't the type to take a victory lap, so on her third and final run, she attempts a right corked 1080 — a trick she has yet to land in competition — and comes up a few degrees short. «I was really proud of my second run and wanted to step it up,» Gu says after the contest. «I know I'll get the 10 next time.»

The win is Gu's third in 13 days, in the third of five finals in four disciplines in which she will compete over a two-week span. After this morning's halfpipe win, she will rest, grab lunch and finish second in slopestyle. Twenty-four hours later, she'll take third and win «best trick» in street style, a rail-jam-style contest that requires hiking a small park.

Gu is, without debate, the most dominant woman in freeskiing, and she's one of the only athletes in the sport who's won major international titles in all three Olympic disciplines: big air, slopestyle and halfpipe. In Beijing, the 18-year-old California native is a favorite to win gold in all three. But she will do so while competing for China.

Born in San Francisco to a Chinese mother and American father and raised by her mother and maternal grandmother, Gu announced in June 2019, at age 15, that she would switch country affiliations and compete for China in the Beijing Games. «This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make,» Gu wrote in an Instagram post at the time. «The opportunity to help inspire