Summarize this content to 100 words: The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 Winter OlympicsAn outlier lies among the list of Forbes’ 2025 world’s highest-paid female athletes.Tennis star Coco Gauff tops the list, earning an estimated $33 million, followed by her peers Aryna Sabalenka ($30m) and Iga Swiatek ($25.1m) but then appears Eileen Gu. The leading trio are household sporting names, freestyle skier Gu is not, but her earnings? $23.1m.Every year since the 22-year-old won two gold medals and silver at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in the big air, halfpipe and slopestyle — making her the youngest Olympic champion in freestyle skiing aged 18 — she has ranked in the top five highest-paid female athletes.In Forbes’ most recent rankings she sits above tennis stars Naomi Osaka and Madison Keys and basketball’s Caitlin Clark, while the next Winter Olympian on the list, ranked joint 18th, is 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn, earning $15 million less than Gu. The all-time leader in freeskiing World Cup wins will defend her big air and halfpipe titles at the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina this month. But despite the medals and victories, the 2026 Olympic torchbearer earned $0.1 million from skiing last year — $23 million came from her lucrative off-field endorsements, dwarfing every other athlete bar Gauff.Gu is an IMG model and has walked down the runway for brands such as Victoria’s Secret and Louis Vuitton. That the majority of her earnings come from off-field endorsements is not surprising, as it is normal across most women’s sports as exposure has increased at a faster rate than salaries.Tennis sees the highest on-court earnings as the four Grand Slam tournaments have paid equal prize money to men and women since 2007, but that is not applicable to smaller tournaments. Gauff earned $8m on court, Sabalenka $15m, matching her sporting income, and Swiatek $10.1m.Most female athletes’ baseline salaries may be lower, but their marketability is high.“They have the same celebrity pull of being big names in their sports and make perfect brand endorsers,” said Josh Hershman, Global COO at London-based sports marketing agency Ten Toes. “If you compare the budget of Arsenal women’s team versus the men’s team, they’re not the same, but a brand’s budget for using high-profile people is.”Gu, who was born and raised in San Francisco but switched to represent her mother’s native China in 2019, is also known by her Chinese name Gu Ailing. In the skiing universe, she’s renowned for landing high-scoring and difficult corkscrew maneuvers, enough to make your stomach flip just watching. But another fascinating aspect is how she has become such a commercial powerhouse.Her talent as a promising teen skier made her stand out but, equally, even at 16, she was on the cover of six different fashion magazines in China after a visit one summer.Hershman, who works with leading sporting talent, brands and rights holders, describes her, from a commercial perspective, as the “perfect storm.”
Eileen Gu has become a commercial powerhouse. (Remy Steiner / Getty Images for IWC)Gu, who at 17 became the then-youngest honoree on the Forbes China 30 Under 30 list after claiming two golds and a silver at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, has many ingredients, irrespective of her success in skiing, which contribute to her commercial success.
Thanks to her American and Chinese heritage, Gu has appeal in two of the world’s largest markets. At the start of 2026, Gu has over seven million followers on her Weibo account, a Chinese social media platform, five million more than her English-language Instagram page. Her commercial potential is huge despite freestyle skiing not being a major sport in either of those countries.“If you have an athlete with a genuine, authentic story in both markets, then you’re onto a winner,” said Hershman.In the lead-up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics, her portfolio of sponsors, which transcend the world of skiing, was vast. She covered billboards across the Chinese capital, but since then, her portfolio has become more selective, focussing on a core group of partners.Gu has long-term endorsement deals, covering fashion and luxury, with Western brands, such as Porsche, Red Bull and Swiss watch manufacturer IWC Schaffhausen, and Chinese ones, including Anta Sports, Bosideng jackets, Mengniu Dairy and, most recently, TCL electronics. She recently told American news magazine TIME the financial considerations tied to representing Chinese companies were never a factor in her decision to switch allegiances.The Chinese and American crossover has not come without its difficulties. Gu has faced criticism for her decision to represent China. Before the 2022 Beijing Olympics, for example, right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, then at Fox News, described her choice as “dumb” while the channel’s co-host Will Cain said she was “ungrateful” and had “betrayed America.” In June 2025, Gu said on The Burnouts podcast, hosted by two former Stanford students, she initially felt sad, misunderstood and disappointed at hearing such comments.“Then I felt really angry,” she added. “Who are you to get to go online with this big platform? At least invite me for a debate. Let me come defend myself. At least let me tell my story. It’s unfair you get to bully me one-sided. I’m just not a fan of that.”Meanwhile, that same year, the English language newspaper South China Morning Post reported that Chinese internet users described Gu as “unpatriotic” and “two-faced.”“In the past five years, I’ve represented China in 41 international competitions and have won 39 medals for China,” she told her 20 million followers on Douyin, the Chinese version of video-sharing platform TikTok, in response to the criticism. “I have introduced three chief coaches and donated freestyle skis to the national team, and continually advocated for China and women on the global stage. What have you done for the country?”In a 2022 interview with the New York Times, Gu declined to comment when asked about her citizenship status. China forbids dual citizenship but, according to the Times article, there was no official record to show that Gu has foregone her American citizenship. Her representative declined to comment when asked by The Athletic ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics. In several interviews over the years she has maintained: “When I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese.”
Eileen Gu Ailing competes at the Freeski Halfpipe World Cup at Genting Snow Park on Dec, 11, 2025, in Zhangjiakou, China. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)As clichéd as that may sound, Gu has cultivated her profile in a way which makes her relatable to a young audience. As well as the polished Vogue and Elle photoshoots are mirror selfies and scribbled journal entries on social media. Doing homework in a make-up chair was once her normality.A day in the life video one month out from the Winter Olympics shows her dry ski training and cooling down with a 5km run, there are also pictures of her eating meals in the car and reading while plugged into an oxygen therapy chamber.
Not every 22-year-old has studied at Stanford and Oxford, does backflips on ski slopes, has posed for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue and is named one of Time’s 100 most influential people but, Hershman said, “for so many younger people, that will be aspirational.”As a young athlete at the top of her sport with the east-west crossover, she is extremely marketable, even without the compelling backstory.When she was younger, skiing for Gu — her mother Yan was a part-time ski instructor — was no more than a weekend hobby. A professional career began only when she was a teenager. Aged 15, she won her first junior World Cup event in Italy in 2019 when representing the United States.Fast forward six years and Gu, going into the final run in second place with conditions deteriorating, went all out with her tricks and claimed her 19th World Cup victory at the first halfpipe event of the FIS Freestyle Ski 2025-26 season at Secret Garden in China in December, a winning comeback after she had sustained an injury last January and was forced to sit out the Asian Winter Games and the world championships.“I’ve been training so much, I’ve been working so hard, and every single time I stay the extra hour, do the extra run, it’s proof to myself, it’s evidence to myself that I’m a winner and I deserve to win,” she told media after the Secret Garden victory. “I train like I’ve never won, and I compete like I’ve never lost.”It is her work ethic that drives her ambition. After all, she cannot afford to be thinking about her endorsement deals when executing unprecedented tricks more than 20 feet in the air.Hershman believes that, if Gu were to stop skiing tomorrow, she would still retain commercial value.“In the modern world, people increasingly love the celebrity culture and being able to relate to an individual over the brand, team or league,” said Hershman. “… Now she has a public profile, she is doing a great job of maximising it.”As part of one of her hand-written journal entries, a photo of which she posted on her Instagram in January, Gu wrote: “My work is meaningful because of the positive impact it has not only on myself — mind and body — but also with the added privilege of reaching other people and contributing to the legacy of a sport.
“Getting lost in the magnitude of it all is the highest luxury.”Most would want the money, but medals appear to mean most to Gu.
