“Texting us between runs”: Eileen Gu’s life at Stanford, through friends’ eyes

Eileen Gu ’26 stood atop the Olympic podium Sunday morning in Livigno, the Chinese Five-star Red Flag draped around her shoulders and a smile across her face. In one hand, she clutched a gold medal. In another, she held her skis in the air. Stanford classmate and bronze medalist Zoe Atkin ’26 stood beside her.

In the wake of this latest victory, Gu will leave the 2026 Games as the most decorated female freestyle skier in Olympic history. She has also collected an estimated $23 million per year in sponsorships, including deals with Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Porsche and Red Bull, making Gu the fourth highest-paid female athlete in the world.

Yet as her success has grown, so has the discourse surrounding Gu, an international relations major who was born in San Francisco but chose to compete for China, her mother’s home country, in 2019.

The athlete has since drawn praise and criticism from some of the world’s most influential media outlets and politicians. And while the Stanford ‘bubble’ is known to insulate students from the outside world, Gu’s life on campus has never fully escaped the fame and scrutiny that trails her every run.

“Every single drawer”: Stalking and a break-in on campus

As Gu recently told the press, her first year at Stanford was marked by concerns over her physical safety. 

That year, her friends remember a stalker following Gu on campus. “He knew everything about her schedule,” Gu’s close friend Sawyer Williams ’26 told The Daily. “He knew what building she would enter and at what time. She was leaving class and he was there.”

The situation intensified when the stalker chased Gu. Lauren Koong ’26, Gu’s close friend and roommate, recalled that “she was running away from him, yelling ‘get away from me’ and no one did anything until he got close enough to attack.” Koong is a former executive editor of The Daily.

The police intervened after Gu started yelling. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if they weren’t there,” Koong told The Daily.

Gu took legal action after the incident. According to Koong, however, Stanford had been notified of the stalker prior to the attack and did not take action because he had not made direct contact with Gu.

The following year, during winter quarter, an intruder broke into Gu and Koong’s dorm.

“Our room number had [been] leaked because people were taking selfies with her name on our door.” Koong said. The dorm and room number were identifiable based on Gu and Koong’s door signs. “We obviously took her name down from the door, but people found out.”

Williams, who lived on the same floor as Gu and Koong, was the one to discover the break-in. “I walked past the door and it was wide open,” he said. “Lauren’s room had been sifted through, Eileen’s room had been tampered with.”

In shock, Williams called Koong, who was terrified by the news. Gu was traveling at the time.

“I walked in and all the drawers had been pulled open,” Koong recalled. “The closet doors were flung open. It was just a mess. Someone had gone through every single drawer, every single thing.”

After the incident, police came to the dorm and Koong filed a report, but tracking down the culprit proved difficult. “At the time, one of the entrances didn’t have security cameras, so it’s not like we could see everyone that went in and out,” said Koong.

In a statement to The Daily regarding the incident, a University spokesperson wrote that Stanford’s “top priority is the safety and well-being of every member of our community. Our dedicated Department of Public Safety (DPS) is committed to creating a safe and secure environment for everyone on campus. In addition to DPS, students have multiple mechanisms through which they can report incidents of concern and receive support from the university.”

“I’m flattered”: Controversy and criticism

In public life, Gu has faced criticism over her choice to represent China.

Entering the 2022 Beijing Games, she attracted the ire of conservative pundits including Tucker Carlson and Will Cain. Carlson called Gu’s decision “dumb” on his talk show, while Cain, Carlson’s guest, said that Gu was “ungrateful” and “turned her back on the country that not just raised her but turned her into a world-class skier.” 

Vice President JD Vance shared his opinion of Gu on Feb. 17, telling Fox News, “I certainly think that somebody who grew up in the United States of America, who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that make this country a great place, I would hope that they want to compete with the United States of America.”

After a qualifying run on Thursday, Gu responded to Vance in an interview. “I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s sweet,” she said.

Others have called for Gu to denounce China’s human rights abuses, including the treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

A parallel discourse has played out among some Stanford students, including on Fizz, an anonymous social media platform. Some have used the app to voice negative opinions of their classmate.

“In a world full of Eileen Gus, be Alysa,” one user wrote on Friday, referencing Alysa Liu, an Olympic figure skater who competes for Team USA. Comparisons of Liu and Gu, two Chinese Americans from the Bay Area, have pitted the two athletes against each other.

Over the years, the skier has brushed off critiques. “There are geopolitical factors at play, and people just hate China generally. So it’s kind of difficult when I’m lumped in with this evil monolith that people want to dislike,” Gu told Time. “It’s never really about me and my skiing.”

“There’s a lot of xenophobia,” Koong told The Daily. “For some people, it’s hard to accept that someone can be as talented, accomplished and as hard working as Eileen, and in turn, people will always try to tear her down.”

Koong said she is most bothered by some critics’ inconsistency: “It’s crazy to say she shouldn’t compete for China, when over Covid, those same people were telling Asian Americans to ‘go back where they came from.’”

Village behind the victory

For those in Gu’s inner circle at Stanford, the story is closer to that of an ordinary college student. Since enrolling in fall of 2022, the Olympian joined a sorority, studied abroad at Oxford and planned dinners and surprise birthday parties for friends, balancing social commitments against her academics and training schedule.

In her sophomore year, she created the “Gu League” with Williams. A riff on the NBA’s G League, playing recreational basketball offered a way of gathering her friends. To commemorate the moment, Williams gifted Gu a custom ‘Gu League’ basketball for Christmas. 

“In the same way that she is the best free skier, best model, best student, she is also the best friend,” Koong said. “It’s very cliche but I think that’s a side of her that a lot of people don’t get to see.”

Reflecting on their friendship, Koong recalled Gu once being in New York for work and attending an event catered by a world-class chef. “She brought home a jar of his special pickles because she knows I love pickles. That’s my favorite snack,” Koong said. “Her mind could be in a million different places at once. She remembers the little details and she makes time for things… her friendships are number one.”

Six of Gu’s close friends, including Williams and Emme Roberts ’26, made the journey to support her in the Alps despite midterm season. The plan to travel to the Games came together almost four years ago during their freshman year.

Missing a week of school and taking a 13-hour flight, Gu’s friends continued to show their support in Milan-Cortina, sporting custom hats that combine Gu’s name and the Olympic Rings symbol. After spending hours commuting by bus from Bormio to Gu’s events in Livigno, they arrived early to stand in the front row.

“Being at the base of the pipe, getting ready for an event to start, your heart starts racing,” Roberts said.

While her friends were nervous at the base, Gu remained calm at the top of the mountain, listening to rap music. Gu was “surprisingly chill,” according to another Stanford student and friend. The student requested to remain anonymous because she had skipped class to see Gu compete in Italy. “You’d expect an athlete at this level to be so intense, so focused, so locked in. Whereas… she was texting us between runs and we’re like, ‘girl, put your phone away.’” 

The energy on the mountain was palpable each time Gu came down the pipe.

“When you’re there, it’s simultaneously terrifying and electric… it’s like ‘oh my god, you could have died,’” said the anonymous friend.

After Gu fell during the freeski halfpipe qualifying on Thursday, excitement quickly turned into fear. “I literally stopped breathing,” said the friend. Gu was able to recover and her subsequent runs punched her ticket into Sunday’s freeski final.

Gu’s support system also includes her mother, Yan Gu, who received her MBA in 1994 from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and later worked in finance. Yan raised Gu as a single parent, and drove her daughter up to Lake Tahoe to practice on weekends. The round trip journey, which spanned eight hours, brought them closer together. First hitting the slopes at age three, Gu tried out freestyle at eight, and won a national junior title the following year.

Between two flags

Spending summers in Beijing, Gu studied at Yan’s alma mater Peking University during summers before college and considered competing for China early on. The skier has said that she discovered a goal of increasing representation for her sport in China. “I like building my own pond,” Gu told Time.

Despite Gu’s public statement, the media has continued to focus on her affiliation with China, including her citizenship status. The Olympic Charter requires that Olympic athletes must be citizens of the country they represent. Gu is eligible to be a Chinese citizen through Yan. China, however, does not allow for dual citizenship, raising questions about the skier’s citizenship status which she has avoided directly addressing in recent years.

“I’m American when I’m in the U.S., and I’m Chinese when I’m in China,” Gu told reporters in Beijing. “I’ve been very outspoken about my gratitude to both the U.S. and China for making me the person I am.”

While the Olympian’s situation is unique, Gu is not alone in competing for an ancestral country. Other Stanford athletes, including Gu’s competitor and freestyle skier Zoe Atkin ’26 and snowboarder Siddhartha Ullah ’27, were born in the U.S. and compete for Great Britain.

In June 2019, Gu, who was 15 at the time, posted her announcement to compete for China on Instagram, writing that it was an “incredibly tough decision.” Gu also noted that in making the decision, she hoped to “unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”

Following Milan-Cortina, Gu will return to Stanford to complete her degree.

“She can do anything. The world is her oyster,” said Koong.

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