Eileen Gu’s golden secret: ‘train like you’ve never won, compete like you’ve never lost’

Eileen Gu kept her perfect record at the Genting Resort Secret Garden intact on Saturday, battling challenging conditions and some brief self-doubt to claim gold in the first Halfpipe World Cup of the 2025-26 season.\nThe double Olympic gold medallist has never lost on the course that hosted the Beijing Games almost four years ago, and Gu laid down the kind of performance that had already earned her 18 World Cup titles heading into the weekend.\nStill, it needed an exceptional final run amid challenging weather that affected the speed and amplitude of multiple skiers.\nBefore the 22-year-old Chinese Olympian’s last-ditch attempt, it was Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin who looked to be in the driver’s seat after she scored a 90.25 in her first run of the final, five points better than her rival’s opening score.\nBut with her back against the wall, Gu did not hold back and produced a string of tricks to post a winning score of 91.75.\n\n“That was not easy. I’ve been struggling with speed all of training,” Gu said. “I actually almost didn’t compete because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do my tricks at the amplitude I was at. That was the first full run that I’ve landed all day. It was such a mental battle.”\nAustralia’s Indra Brown finished third behind Atkin on 82.00 to claim her first World Cup podium in what was the 15-year-old’s World Cup debut.\nGu’s win comes just a week after she claimed gold in the inaugural Snow League Freeski competition at the same venue.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nView this post on Instagram\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA post shared by FIS Park & Pipe World Cup (@fisparkandpipe)\n\n\n\n“I’m less of an ‘affirmations’ person and more of an ‘evidence’ person,” Gu said. “What I mean by that is, find the right thing to do and do so much volume that it’s unreasonable to fail.\n“So 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. So just building back confidence, slowly.”\nWith a record 19 World Cup wins and three Olympic medals to her name – gold in halfpipe and big air, and silver in slopestyle – Gu said training had always been the secret to her success.\n“I train like I’ve never won, and I compete like I’ve never lost,” she said.\n