Feb 17, 2026
3 min read
Jola has not been able to defend her gold medal since 2022.
Winter Olympics 2026: Eileen Gu wins silver medal in women's freestyle skiing big air.
LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — Eileen Gu's second Winter Olympics isn't going as well as her first, but aside from her aerial silver medal celebration, she won't come away disappointed.
Facing a strong field of freestyle skiers who performed bigger and better tricks four years ago in Beijing, American Gu, now competing for China, was unable to defend her gold medal in this event, but had two good runs and won thanks to excellent tricks from Canadian Megan Oldham.Italian Flora Tabanelli won bronze.
Gu had a strong first round with a double cork score of 90.00 and a double cork of 1440, but a mediocre second round put her in a precarious position heading into the final round.
In big air, skiers get three attempts and are ranked according to their two best combined results.
Gu's last goal was fantastic.A perfectly executed 1260 double to the left inspired them to throw their fists in the air when a score of 89.00 came in and took them into second place behind Oldham, a position they maintained until the end.
It was Gus' second medal of the Olympics, including one he won in slopestyle.He has another chance to take his technique back to Stanford — where he re-entered as a junior after the Olympics — in the halfpipe, where he's also the defending gold medalist.
The start of the aerial final was delayed 75 minutes as heavy snow with gusts of up to 18 miles per hour made conditions extremely dangerous for the sport in which competitors jumped a 15-story rope, leaped into the air and performed their main trick.
Although the conditions had improved, the snow was still falling at the start of the final and he got it all over.That didn't stop competitors from trying big tricks, including Muir's corkscrew 1620 left - 4 ½ full turns and off-axis flips and Cindy's hold - which scored 93.0 points and put her in position to win if she could pull off another big trick in her final run.
Ironically, this is the same bold move that Gu adopted in his third and final attempt to win his second gold medal in Beijing in 2022.Trying to do something special again and repeat what Gu had done four years earlier, Muir went far in her final round, but did not succeed.
Two Swiss skiers, Anouk Andraska and Mathilde Gremaux, were forced to withdraw from the final due to injuries sustained during training on the Monday before the final.
Gremaud, who beat Gu to win the slopestyle gold medal last week, has injured his hip, according to an official Swiss Skin statement, and will be a challenger for the podium in the air.So far, it remains unclear whether the injury will keep him out of the semi-finals scheduled for the rest of the week.
