Winter Olympics: San Francisco’s Eileen Gu finishes second but her slopestyle loss is hardly a ‘disaster’

By EDDIE PELLS

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — The nickname for the trick is “disaster.” Freeskiing star Eileen Gu saw it as something other than that.

Because Gu landed that trick once at the top of the supersized rails portion of the Olympic slopestyle course Monday, she opened her Milan-Cortina odyssey — three events and up to 15 dangerous trips down the slopes over 15 days — with a second straight silver medal in the event.

Because the San Francisco native couldn’t land it the other two times over the three-run contest, she never really had a chance to go for gold.

For the second straight time, that belonged to Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud in what, only minutes after it was over, was already being hailed as the best women’s slopestyle contest in the sport’s history.

“That was definitely the best slopestyle run I’ve ever done,” Gu said.

And Gremaud: “I would say it’s the best one I’ve ever done in my life, yes.“

Megan Oldham of Canada hit back-to-back jumps with 1260 degrees of spin — not an everyday occurrence out there — and finished with the bronze.

Not surprisingly, the world’s two best skiers each nailing the best runs of their lives resulted in a margin of .38 — a sliver of space that was virtually the same as the gap when they also finished 1-2 at the Beijing Games four years ago.

And yet, for two skiers so closely bunched, the difference in their approaches couldn’t have been more stark.

About two weeks ago, Gu set about reworking her rails portion — the four features on the more-technical top of the slope — to juice up her Olympic routine.

There are options up there, and on the very first rail, Gu was the only skier out of the 12 finalists to choose the longer rail on the right.

The trick — skiing backward, then leaping over the lower part of the feature while twisting to her right, the unnatural direction, and trying to land smack-dab on the rail — is called “disaster” for a very simple reason.

“It can go really, really bad,” said U.S. coach Ryan Wyble, one of many, including NBC analyst and former pro freeskier Tom Wallisch, who called this the most progressive women’s contest they’d seen.

When it goes good, though, you end up with what Gu had — the lead and a sense of real accomplishment after landing it on her first run, especially knowing it was that trick that tripped her up throughout training and also caused the first-run fall two days earlier that turned qualifying into such a stresser.

“To be able to put it down when it counts, to peak at the right time, I really think it’s important and a testament to my mental strength,” Gu said.

The judges liked it. The 9.2 they awarded for the first jump and the 25.95 they gave for the entire rails portion were the highest marks of the day.

But the high-flying part of this show — the part that brings the oohs and ahhs and that landed this event on the Olympic program 12 years ago — begins with the three jumps toward the bottom. That’s where Gremaud placed her focus in the run-up to the Olympics, and it showed.

For her winning run, Gremaud, a 26-year-old who has last year’s world championship title to go with her two Olympic golds, skied backward, then flipped twice while spinning once and nailed the landing. It was the first time she’d ever pulled that off in a contest. She followed that with back-to-back 1260s, each in a different direction.

“Definitely the most intense run I’ve ever done,” she said.

Gu, meanwhile, could not land the “disaster” on either her second or third runs. After her final fall, she stabbed her poles into the ground and put her hand on her hips. Moments later, she was skiing down, then smiling into the camera at the bottom.

All of which turned Gremaud’s final run into a victory lap. She did straight big airs down the course with her country’s flag flapping from the back of her ski suit.

“I was not happy for you that you didn’t land the third run,” Gremaud said to Gu during the medalist news conference. “But I was happy for myself that I didn’t have to go and, like, send it again for the third run.”

Gu laughed. She gets it. More than the medalists themselves, the real winner on this day, all agreed, was women’s skiing.

“Did I want to land a second and third run? Yes. Did I have plans to do bigger and better tricks? Yes. But can I be at all disappointed or feel in any way except for immensely proud? No,” she said. “The first run I landed was the run I came here to do. I’m proud of my skiing.

“You are literally watching women’s skiing evolve in real time, and how special is that?”