Eileen Gu fails to defend Big Air title in Olympics heartbreaker

Eileen Gu wasn’t able to defend her gold medal.

She settled for silver in the Olympic women’s freeski big air competition, with Megan Oldham taking home the gold.

Gu, the American-born star who competes for China, recorded a score of 90.0 on her first run, which was tied for third-highest behind Austria’s Lara Wolf and Canada’s Oldham.

She did not cleanly grab the tail of her ski midair nor neatly stick her landing on her second run and got a score of 61.25, momentarily knocking her out of a medal spot.

It meant defending her gold medal in the event came down to her third run.

Each competitor got three runs, with the highest two scores getting combined for an overall total score.

And on that third and final run, she recorded a score of 89.00 — and combined with her first run, a combined score of 179.0 — to push her to second behind Oldham.

There were still six more competitors to go after Gu before her silver was solidified.

Oldham led after two runs.

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England’s Kirsty Muir had a chance to rise above her with a big third run, but fell on her landing.

That solidified the gold for Oldham, who took her last run with no pressure — she fell, but it didn’t matter, already with a combined score of 180.75.

Italy’s Flora Tabanelli won bronze.

The final was delayed over an hour due to adverse weather conditions, though it was still snowing hard throughout.

Earlier in these Olympics, Gu won silver in slopestyle.

She won the freeski big air gold four years ago in the 2022 games.

She is juggling three different competitions, something she has been outspoken about dealing with during these games. She was practicing for the halfpipe event in between her runs in Monday’s big air final.

The daughter of an American father and Chinese mother, Gu made waves when she switched her sporting allegiance from the U.S. to China in 2019 ahead of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where she won gold in the women’s freeski big air and in the women’s freeski halfpipe and won silver in the women’s freeski slopestyle.

She was paid $6.6 million by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau last year, the Wall Street Journal reported recently.

She has also landed a plethora of endorsement deals, making her one of the highest-paid athletes at the Olympics.