EILEEN GU: “The Ground Was Cracking Beneath Me.”

I was like, who's this sharp, smart, eloquent, incredible athlete?

And then we saw each other at the "Dior Show" in LA, and I had on my heart, I've never

done this to anyone else in the world. I came right to you, and I was like, "I'm a fan, I want you on the show," and thankfully you wanted to come on too. I'm first of all, so flattered to hear you say that.

“Finally, the feeling is absolutely mutual, I think what you do is so incredible, and you bring”

this very enlightened, but also highly accessible, high touch, very applicable to real life kind of approach to so many people, and I genuinely believe you've made so many people's lives better. Hey, it's Jay, I don't know what your day's been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute, and I hope you're being a little patient with yourself, but you deserve it, and yeah, I'll

talk to you soon. I lingu welcome to on-purpose. Thank you for having me Jay, I'm so happy to be here. I wanted to stop asking you, today you're doing everything, I mean, you've graduated from one of the best schools in the world, one of the highest regarded athletes in the world,

in your field, fashion, business. We know all of this from your resume, what's something you wish people knew about you that you couldn't read on your resume? I think for a long time, there was this sense of wanting to justify my academics as independent from sport, and so initially it was, in the sporting community, I would be, you know, the

biggest nerd, I was always helping people with homework, I was kind of known as this

academic person, and then over time as I became more well-known, I think the general assumption or presumption that maybe we hold socially as a society is that, you know, athletes maybe go to school, but they don't really go to school, like that kind of just like implication,

“and I think undercutting that was harder for me, and at the same time, really important,”

just because at my core, I think of myself more as an intellectual person who chose to do sports and to apply that kind of cerebral take in like an athletic context. It could have been something else versus an athlete who thinks they are smart, right? Like that, I think that's like an important distinction to make, and so I think one thing for me was getting into Stanford when I was 16, and doing that before the Olympics, so that I had my, what would have been my senior year,

and then a gap year? So those two years to be like full time, that was my first time being pro as in like full time as an athlete. Before that, I was Monday through Friday in school, just totally, you know, normal. I was the first person in our high school's history to graduate early to kind of make that situation work, but it was not because it was an Olympic accommodation, it was because I had done the credits and found a way to graduate early, and that was really special as well. So I think

what's misunderstood is maybe that how much to the extent that I value education and seeing that

as like the fundamental layer and building on top of that. As a young girl, were you always

“athletically and academically inclined at the same time, were they too paths that always existed?”

I think yes, my mom did an incredible job just putting me into everything, like literally everything, very obscure things if you think about it and like have no interaction with one another, right? Like I did archery, I did like horseback riding, I did rock climbing, and at one point I tried swimming and tennis, but then I, you know, longer term, I did soccer and basketball and cross-country, I did ballet, I did piano, I did singing lessons, like everything. My mom would say that I was

athletic. There were a couple sports that I thought were pretty impactful running being one of them, and I hold that to this day, and then obviously skiing when I started on my ski team at seven or eight years old, but again, I would say that I was much more known as like the nerd in my class than the athlete in my class. And what would you nerd out on? Like what were the things that you were fascinated by or drawn to wood? In elementary and middle school, I went to a K to eight

all-girl school, and so every year we would have like the school slash, it was like math, oh my god, kind of thing. And so like I won that in our great every year and our science, you know, I did that both years that it was available and like won that in our school. So I think it was like math and science, we're definitely my big things, and then interestingly when I got into high school, it kind of moved more into like literature and philosophy, and so over time it's been like,

I would say I have an analytical lens to everything, and I take more of like a philosophical like overview on top of that. Yeah, when I watch you do an interview, I'm like, this is a philosopher speaking with an academic, with a scholar, like my gosh, I'm like, take me to church, I leave. And I'm like, I want to come to this motivational lecture by Eileen Gu, like that's how I feel

but I'm also being extremely genuine when I say that. Like it's everything that you share is pointing and powerful. I want to get into that. But before we do, can you take me back to a childhood memory that you have that you feel defines who you are today? First like, thank you so much for saying that. I'm like deeply flattered and humbled. And I do want to say that like nothing that I said during the Olympics was calculated. Like I had no idea what any of the questions were

going to be. So if it had been something else, I would have answered something else. It's more

“to my heart. And I think a big part of that was like having an academic foundation to be able”

to think, to begin with. And so there's that. So like I've never done PR training. Like I don't

really know what that is. I don't really know what that would entail. I just sent and think, man, like I just a lot of thinking. And I'm sure that you're like so unbored with that. Absolutely. This is going to sound really crazy. I started journaling very early. I was probably around four, and I think I was given a journal, maybe as like a gift or something. I don't remember particularly. But I remember very distinctly. It was one of those journals that had like a little lock on it.

And I really liked it because it was my first thing that I felt like was really mine and contextualizing privacy and like having this thing where it's like my brain outside of my brain and it's like only mine and I can protect it with this little like locking key mechanism. So I thought that was

really special. And in the first page of the journal, I wrote along these lines. Dear journal,

my name is Eileen. I'm four years old. I'm writing this now so that when you are reading this, when it is published, like you will believe that I actually was four and wrote this.

“Which wow. I think about now and there's just like let's unpack this. Right?”

Hey, the hubris that I had as a four year old to think that I would do something substantive and then be to like write a book about it and see that there would be anyone in the world that would possibly care to consume this like writing of a four year old. Right? Like what was the assumption that I had not started like freesking. I had no idea what freesking was. I had no idea what I was going to do in life. I didn't even know what I was going to be drilling about. But in my head, I was like

one day I'm going to publish this. I'm going to do something important enough that people are going to care to read it and that this is going to be meaningful and impactful enough to be worth writing about. Obviously, you know, it wasn't in that. But like that was kind of like the implication right? Which is kind of interesting to think about as a four year old. So yeah, I don't really know it's a much different game from what I have no idea. But yeah, and one day you will have to publish that.

“I'm working on that. You are. That's incredible. You have to come back on to talk about the book.”

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incredible though. I love hearing about how people start so young and those habits start so young.

Have you journaled pretty much every day since that time or did you fall in and out of love with it? Yeah, I definitely not every day. And also I would say my journaling habit is actually less like dear diary. This is what I did today. I would describe it more as like an anthology of essays. So like what is one somatic principle that keeps recurring? Maybe like today or this week or like within a month, right? I just keep returning. So like a recurring theme I have is like on womanhood.

So it's like my continual grasping with like my sense of femininity, like growing into that. How do I balance like my masculine feminine sides? How do I inhabit my power without feeling shameful about it? I will also without feeling performative about it. And that has been so complex because I was the only girl on my ski team. But also I mentioned I went to an all-girl school. So my day to Friday I would be only around girls and then weekends I would be only around boys.

So I was like a cutely aware of gender and gender dynamics. And also the power that holds when you're the only one. So if you're the only girl in a ski team you feel like you're carrying all of womanhood on your shoulders. Because you're the only one who's representing. And so if you're good, then you're dispelling all of these myths. But if you're bad, then you're corroborating them. And so suddenly like I'm the end of one sample,

that is like upholding all of these stereotypes. So I was like super aware of that when I was seven or eight. And so over time, you know, with introducing fashion with all of these other kind of like elements into my life, I've grown a lot. But I would say I'm still working on it. That's fascinating. I love that you have a space that is beyond the public eye that's private to you with that locking key. That allows you to have these exchanges with yourself around

your philosophy on life and how you approach it. Even what you were just saying now in knowing

feminineity and where they fit into your life and where you see them being expressed. So I started bringing the theory. Congratulations. We love Jonathan Anderson. Thank you. He's amazing. And I think he plays with it so interestingly because if you think about like a deer face, it's very, it's like fresh. It's young. But the outfit is not reductive in that sense, right? It's not something that's one dimensional of like, here is a caricature of like a teenage girl.

And we're going to like slap it on a grown woman. It doesn't feel like that at all. There's kind of this like modern strength slash like the silhouetteing is a lot more inclusive. And there's almost like a tomboyish style within like a very flowy feminine fabric or print. And so that kind of like comparison between cotton style when you're shooting an editorial for example, how do you pose to bring that out? How do you work with shapes and lighting and expression

and different hair and makeup and a different look to kind of like embody a very multi-dimensional sense of femininity. It's not like femininity is the color pink and we all smile and we all wear

“this hair cut and we all, you know, do XYZ and that's what being a woman is. It's like”

understanding it in all its multi-dimensional nuance. So that was like something that I did maybe two days ago and I was thinking about recently. And you're an oldie or today? Of course. We love it. Yeah. On brand. You started training when you were seven or eight you said. Yes. What does training for being a free skier look like at seven to eight? Talk to me about the regime, the discipline, the diet, what are you having to do at that age to build this phenomenon

skills that you have today? Yeah. Thank you giving me a little too much credit. What do you mean? I mean, it was a ski team that occurred on weekends nor start Tahoe. I think there was maybe like a couple weekday options for people who were local but since I went to school in San Francisco what would usually happen would be Monday to Friday in school normally. And then on Friday after school my mom would pick me up drive the four hours to get to Tahoe during which I would, you know,

when I was younger, sleep and then as I got older you know, do homework, prep, do whatever I need to do. Saturday morning I would wake up and this is actually an important distinction. A lot of people

think my mom is a tiger mom. She's totally not. Her number one thing was always sleep. So I was

always the last person to get to ski team. Like I was always the last person because we would get there so late after school and I'd be the only one driving from San Francisco. And so she would let me sleep until I woke up naturally, you know, usually I would not wake up before eight. And I would go skiing maybe from like nine, nine, thirty until ski team would end at two, thirty. And then my mom and I would probably ski another hour just to take advantage, you know, we're already in Tahoe

“but when I was training it was so much fun. It was so fun and I think that was the most important”

factor and still is to this day. I mentioned I was the only girl in my ski team but beyond that skiing was the great equalizer, right? And anybody who's a human knows what it feels like when you're terrified, right? And that is not a gender-devited thing and you know how elated you feel when you're

asking your body to do something it's never done before. And like that kind of very like human

and very saturated kind of like emotion just makes you bond with the people that you're experiencing with that much more. And so of course, we'll be little challenges, you know, I remember my coach would be like whoever can slide this reel the longest gets a dollar or a sticker or a gummy bear. And it just encouraged this really healthy sportsmanship and really healthy competition. And you know, this was pre-purety. So I was definitely one of the best if not the best on the team

and there were several others and you know, we would be jostling for that position and like maybe

“one day someone learns a new trick and I remember so distinctly my first time sliding a rail.”

So there's like boxes in the train park and then rails are like the, you know, like a handrail and so this one I remember so vividly it was my entire team lined up next to the rail. And I was the first person on our team to slide the rail. And I remember I, you know, everyone's lined up they're watching, you know, I was like keyed up. I do it and it's just like this chorus of, you know, seven eight year old boys like wow, I mean and of course, you know, by the end of the

day every single person slid the rail. But that was just the sense of like pure joy and you're really sharing it with people that you form lifelong bonds with and who I'm still very close with to this day, even though the others didn't go on to become professional skiers, we still just

will always share that bond and that's really special. That's incredible. You speak about your

mom so beautifully. Of course, I'm at the Dior shirt she's with us here today. Yeah. Talk to me about how much you learned from your mom and your grandma that was beyond just this incredible dedication she had to you, this ability to want you to sleep, but then driving you four hours, like that level of devotion to you and wanting you to have this full-rich life, what would the lessons that we may not see through that that you've experienced and feel from your mother and grandma?

gentlest, just go get her optimist that I've ever met in my entire life. When she was my age, she was an electrical engineer at one of the largest copper mines in China, at 21, which is crazy. I'm 22 now, and that was in her generation in China as a woman. So it's like, oh, I talk about being a woman and male dominated sport. She was in the mines, overseeing men in the mines, at 21, like that's so obscene. I can't even imagine, right? And not once has she ever had a victim

mentality. Not once has she ever thought, oh, we were so difficult. Oh, I was the only woman. She was like, of course. You think they could keep up? Of course, I was the only one who could do it. Like why would they,

you know, be able to do that? Like I need to, and she had older brothers, and she would always say

how she was keeping them in line and like, so there was never a sense of like oppression for her. Even if objectively the circumstances she grew up, and we're very difficult, she lost her mother at a very young age. And so losing that kind of like female force in her life, I just can't even imagine. And yet she just went on to become this like fierce, fierce woman and for that I will always always admire her. That's beautiful. She definitely passed that on to my mom. My mom, I would say,

is the efficiency queen. So she gets things done. In modern speak, in like Silicon Valley speak, she's an operator. She is the one who will ask, okay, how? And so she will not do unnecessary suffering. She will not work for the sake of working. She will do the shortest path and the most efficient to do something with high quality and uncompromising results and attention to detail. So anything she produces is the highest quality. But she is not the one who's going to stay

up late all night to do it. She is not the one who's going to suffer unnecessarily. And so between

“the two of them, I think my grandma will like set the stage and set the direction. And my mom”

gave me kind of the toolkit, if you will, to then it go on and achieve it. So in that way, I would feel like the two of them almost like co-parented slash like formed the basis for like these two really complementary parts of me. Yeah, you've got the vision and the tools. Yes.

Yeah, the dreams and the practices. Exactly. Yeah, that's pretty spectacular. Yes. It's incredible.

I mean, when I'm hearing about your grandma, I'm like, wow, the fact that she was doing that 21 in her generation in China is unbelievable. I know a lot of people look at you today and they're like, I've failed at life. I'm really behind. I lingue as achieved everything in the world. I feel like it. Right. And I can hear that now. And I'm not doing it. If someone was listening to us right now and they're thinking, Jay, I lean. I feel behind.

I feel stuck. I'm 22 years old. I'm 25. I haven't achieved anything yet. I don't know who I am.

“What would you say to them? Oh my gosh. I, I feel the same way. Absolutely. And I think the reason”

for that is a hedonic treadmill theory generally speaking. Right. And so the idea being you acclimate

so quickly to your circumstances that it's no longer objective. It's not like, oh, I reach a certain

benchmark and I will be happy. It's the faster you run, the faster it moves and you just keep going and going and going. And so relatively, you can feel exactly the same as anybody in your peer group. You're respective of these kind of like objective goals and achievements. And so I would say, I think this is a hallmark of our age. Like I think being in your early 20s, mid 20s, late 20s, this is like a point in your life where it's really important to feel that way. And I almost

think of that as like activation energy. I mean generally in chemistry it's like you can't perform a reaction without a catalyst. Like you need some kind of energy either within the system or externally introduced to create it. And so that dynamism and maybe we kind of create that and like feel it's like discomfort. But the fact of the matter is it's energy that doesn't know where to go. And so that's a neutral thing. It's more about redirecting it instead of like

sitting with this golf ball or butterfly or whatever you want to kind of think about it as like bouncing inside of you feeling really uncomfortable. It's more about doing the self work to know where that energy goes. But the fact that you have it as a hallmark of being young is so beautiful. Yeah, it's almost like you're saying that we fight that limmerance. And we almost wanted to go away rather than what I'm hearing you say is actually if you channel it, if you redirect it,

if you put it forward, then actually that's going to propel you. That's going to make the difference. I think so. But knowing what direction to take is so much harder than people think.

“And my mom and I talk about this all the time, where I think hard work, super important,”

but over praised, direction underrated. And so we think about this as like who's working the hardest, who's doing the most. But if you're punching a wall, who's punching the wall the hardest. That's not helpful. Like who's getting to the destination. If you can walk around a column, maybe it's easier than punching the wall. So it's not necessarily about doing the most.

super important. What's more important though at our age is taking the time to figure out the

direction. And that's worth the time that it takes to explore. And I'm saying this as if I'm some kind of like sage entity. I'm like, oh, I've been through it. I crash out about this like every night every night. I'm like, oh my God, what am I going to do? Like I'm so behind. I feel like I'm not living up to my potential. I have so many ideas and so many things to do. And I'm not materializing any of them. I feel like I'm losing time by the day and totally

paralyzed. And I think that's just like a really relatable feeling. A lot of my friends are graduating. But you know, my entire class with me. And I think that's a pretty shared sentiment for everybody. Yeah, you're so right. It is a generational thing. And it's an age thing where you're in that space where

“it's almost like up until 22. Most of your life is mapped out for you. You know, you go from 7th”

grade to 8th grade. You go to college. Get a degree in the north of a sudden. Now you actually have

to make choices that don't have a timeline. I think you're so right about that. And in school, success is the heuristics are so clearly defined for you. Like the metrics of success are there. You have a rubric. You want to get to 100, you know, getting an A plus is good. And everybody wants to get there. Life is so much more complex. And you don't know what your success is. And success looks so different for so many different people. And there are a lot of people who are

really wealthy and really unhappy. And there are a lot of people who in that position would feel super unsuccessful. And there are others who feel extremely successful. And so it is so personal. And so doing the self work to discover what success is is a totally new thing once you leave school.

You spot on the grading system is already decided on your at school. And as soon as you leave,

there is no grading system because now it's all up to you. Who is your athletic sponsor? Like when you're competing? And for, okay, yeah, because I was just thinking what you just said, hard work over praised direction direction underrated. That's world class. I love that. That's an ad right there. That's brilliant. And it's so true. It's so true because we get momentum from direction, not hard work. Yes. The momentum comes because you know the direction you're moving

in and then it's no balls. Exactly. Yes. You can push a rock up a hill as hard as you want. And you won't gather momentum because the directions wrong. But maybe you can imagine him happy. Yes. Sisyphus reference. There you go. Yeah. Talk to me about how you look for direction at your age. With this success you've had, with the multiple opportunities. Now you're in a position where opportunities are flying towards you. You can go anywhere,

do anything, be on any red carpet, interview anywhere. How do you choose? How do you find your direction when you have unlimited opportunities? Unlimited ideas? But at the same time, you're this thoughtful, pensive, introspective human. A lot of people don't know this, but I'm very introverted. And so the older I've gotten, the more I've realized that it's actually really

“important for me to have a little bit of personal space and time because there's kind of two categories”

here. One is my career, which is already somewhat developed. And so when I'm doing that a lot of it's outward facing, which means I've already kind of like done the work to get here. And now it's like I am creating something out of it. Whereas the other thing is me being a 22 year old and I need to build. So what's important is I cannot stagnate in the energy kind of like dissipation phase. Because otherwise I feel like I'm just going to freeze at the age that I became successful and that's

just going to stagnate forever. Whereas I also need to realize that I'm this like independent entity who is 22, which means I need to take the time to learn. I need to take the time to fail. And I need to have these experiences that maybe you don't, you can't really justify with like opportunity cost. But like it's important to travel. It's important to try a new hobby. It's important to make a new friend. It's important to say yes to something that you didn't think you would have fun doing.

I really do try to value that. So as far as like knowing what's important within work, that's very easy for me to decide. I have very clear boundaries. I'd only do things that I feel aligned with me, my values. What's great about my brand is that it's actually just my values and what I like to do and who I am. So there's no kind of like asymmetry there. But it's like I care about women in sports. I care about encouraging young people to do balance sports and academics

as well. I care about uplifting free skiing globally. And I care about cultural exchange. So like those are generally things that thematically will speak to me. I also think that I care a lot about masculine feminine balance. And I care about artistry. I care about creativity. So that's kind of where the fashion side comes in. And generally that's how I will choose events. Those values got me and I feel they have not really led me astray. Within the personal side, it's so nebulous.

“That's why I don't know. Like when you're asking you like what advice would I give?”

Pretty much all I can say is like yeah, I'm also in the cloud. I have no idea what I'm doing.

flip it five times. Just by virtue of how many times you flip the coin. And so the idea of being just expose myself to as many things as possible. And hopefully like trust the model on its training data not to be like super, so we can value on this. But um, every experience you have is just informing you. And like it's like training your gut feeling. And I really do believe in that.

“I love how your life really mirrors a belief that I have, which is that life is more about”

collecting and connecting things than it is about doing or being anything. I love that. And I feel like when I hear you speak, you're collecting things from Silicon Valley, you're collecting things from fashion, you've collected experiences from academia, you've collected things from sport and then you've just connected all of these things. And that's who you are is you're a collection and connection of all these ideas, philosophies, beliefs, interests, values as opposed to like

oh, I'm an athlete or I may, you know, whatever this box is. I just I love that your generation as you do look up to to go, oh, that's what I have to do. I can actually be all these different things at the same time. And I don't have to choose and I don't have to have the tension of fighting between them. Yeah. You talk about your thoughts creating your reality. When I first saw one of your clips that really resonated with me and I was like, who is this person? A 22 talking about

the power of thought. Talked to me about how that became a practice and developing that mindset

became powerful for you at such a young age and how it's been what has allowed you to unlock

everything that's come your way. Wow, you're really good. The way you talked about the pattern recognition is like really sitting with me. I feel like I'm going to marinate on that further in my own time. And you're going to have to do that and then tell me what you want to do. Yeah, what are that? Well, I will profess this by saying I'm an only child. And I actually think that was pretty important because it meant that my mom was an immigrant. And so she talks about this all the time

where she didn't go to high school in the US. So when I came home, you know, being bullied in high school, she didn't really know what to do because she didn't really have this like American high school situation. And that's totally new. She didn't go to undergrad in the US. And so when I was

taking the SAT, she didn't really know what to do in that situation. And what's really amazing

about my mom and I's relationship is that we're so honest with each other and we're so collaborative. And when one of us doesn't know, we don't pretend that we do. And there's this kind of like

“humble and it's like student mentality where it's like, I don't know but I'll learn. And so I think”

I picked that up where I was like, okay, not everyone has all the answers. And I think as a young person, the sooner you learn that the better. Or like, nobody really knows what they're doing. And the sooner you take your fate and agency of learning into your own hands, the better. And it's not about becoming an expert. It's about knowing that you have the power to learn. And that is your greatest superpower. There's a reason why kids learning languages at a young age is so different

from adults learning the same language. Kids just learn so well. And so because I came to the understanding that learning was my superpower very early, I feel like I employed that with kind of like high agency over time. And that's where I was like, wait, I can just not like self parent. But I did read like parenting manuals. You did at what age? It's like 12, 13. For yourself. Yeah. Just to see what was going on. Like I was just curious because my mom had mentioned because obviously I'm her only child.

So she was like, oh, I raised you by the book. Like when you were born, I read all of the like nutrition and like feeding everything. And I did everything to a T. And you turned out pretty well. Like health wise, right? And she also has another saying where she said up until 13, it's me as like the parent contributing genetics is like the big thing. But then beyond that, just like, you know, health, safety, general, like values, all of that until you're 13. But after your 13,

so much of it is like the people who use surround yourself with and yourself learning. And so for me, I was like, wow, you know, I'm 12, 13. So she probably get on that. You know? Maybe I'll also read the parent team and she said it was pretty good. So like, I'll just take a look. They were like an easy read. What did you do? What did you turn in? What did you say? Tell us. Tell us how to parent us. It was like here's how to like parent your preteen. Like when they're being, you know,

combative and like when to leave them to have space and when to initiate a conversation, when to let them fail these kinds of things. How to have the puberty talk. I was reading that. I was super locked in. And then I feel like what was great about that is my mom and I's communication style

“that evolved because I could sit down and be like, hey, I think we should discuss this thing about my”

upbringing. That's amazing. It's kind of like a formalized setting. And for that reason it's just been like

the most amazing teamwork and collaboration. And I admire her. I idolize her. She's totally my hero. In a lot of ways, we are both the same person and different sides of the same coin. We are inextricably connected. And we're both really invested in me. And there's something so special about

relationship with their family. And I think my truly my greatest blessing is that I do.

“I love hearing that because I think there's such a power in allowing a 13-year-old to have the”

opportunity to even do that. So it's one thing that you even opened yourself up to that. Second of all, your mom was game to actually collaborate with you. It was just like, what? Yeah. I mean, it was just from China. She's like, we don't. This is not something we've ever done. But it's cool because it also makes you realize your parent is a person. And as a kid, you don't really think that you're like, oh, this is mom.

It's like the entity is mom. But no, she's a person and she's a woman and she has friends and she has feelings and she's stressed because it's her first time raising a kid. And so the sooner you realize that she's a person with her own thoughts and needs and imperfections and flaws and also points that are so admirable and worthy of copying the better. What are your thoughts now before you start skiing, before you're competing? What are the thoughts

that you program into your mind? Contest mode? Oh my gosh. I'm extremely psychological.

I want to know everything. I have a saying where I say, I train like I've never won and I compete

like I've never lost. Say that again, that is so good. I train like I've never won and I compete like I've never lost. And that's important because A, I find it's difficult to win, but it's way harder to stay there. And for me, you know, now through two Olympic cycles and also so much happens between age 18 and 22 like staying in peak form, during that period of your life, specifically as a woman is very very difficult. From my last Olympics to now, I went through all of college.

Like I was a high school grad and I'm a college grad and that's just two different people. So that's one. The second thing is it keeps you hungry and that's what allows you to perform over time. The third thing is in order to be a winner, you have to have this like insatiable, almost like obsessive, religious, just like all in mentality when you compete. But because it is

so intense, you cannot sustain it always because that's what creates really dangerous egos.

It's what creates the like hubris and overconfidence and complacency that undermines good training because you have to be very critical of your own training. For me, I see only my mistakes. What I'm training. I can never do anything right. Like every single thing. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm two degrees off on that. Oh, I was like a second early. Oh, look at my upper body. I was like three degrees,

“you know, whatever. That's all I think. But when I'm competing, you need to make the switch. And I'm like,”

I am the best person who has ever stepped foot here. Nobody's even going to touch me. Everyone's competing for a second. Doesn't matter. That's it. But what's so important is to separate that. I would say it's like 95% the former and 5% the latter and creating that really conscious distinction is what protects me from going absolutely insane. I'm also not that competitive in my daily life. I'm like a normal amount of competitive, right? But like you can imagine like, oh, you're so competitive

when you ski, are you not like insufferable with lawn games or whatever? You know, no, I'm not. That would make me super annoying to be around. And I'm not. It's only when I compete. I'm like, okay, alter ego. Go time. How did you discover that balance? What you just spoke about feels like something an athlete figures out after 25 years of competing when they realize they've carried

this aggressive competitive mentality and critical mentality far too much into every area of their

life where their family feels that their partner feels if they're married or dating or whatever.

“Whereas you've realized this early in your career, how did you discover that you need to train”

like you've never won and compete like you've never lost? Like, where how did you discover that? Well, for one, my mom just works. The way she instilled work ethic in me is just unparalleled. So I will never be afraid to work harder than other people if I know my direction is correct. And so much of the direction is then cerebral. Maybe because I've gone to school, I have a different perspective on psychology or I'm seeing the physics of a trick in a different

way. So I think A, the underpinning is very academic. And I think that's definitely a different cheating factor for me. I agree. B, I think then applying the work ethic layer on top of that totally supercharges the whole thing. That's like the direction, you know, momentum thing we were talking about. And then see, I think, I just am so introspective. I just, man, I just sit and think, like, I just think about my brain all the time. And I think about who I am. And the direction I'm

moving in, I'm self-assessing, and I'm, you know, error correcting, and I'm criticizing all the time. I am my own greatest project. There's no project in my life that I will ever build. That is as time consuming as living in my body every single day. And so why am I not treating, why am I not

the only way other people can be you is if they are really good at doing themselves. And so for me, I just have to be the very best version of myself. So I picked all of the best qualities or things that I think make me unique. And then just put them together in this like unique pattern matching type style. I believe you, and at the same time, I feel you hold yourself gracefully too.

Like, talk to me about that. Is it, you are hyper critical, you are error correcting, you are fixing

yourself, but I don't feel like it sounds like you beat yourself up. You know what I mean? I talked to me about that because I think that athletes believe in all of us, like non-athletes, I think we don't know the balance. I think a lot of people who are listening and watching right now struggle between trying to push themselves to be better and then pushing themselves so hard they break. Yeah. Talk to me about how you hold those two things together in order to

incrementally improve and become better every day. And at the same time, not burn yourself out

“or beat yourself up. You are not your craft. And I think that distinction is so important”

because I can beat my craft to death and I will never die. And so the point that I'm trying to make

there is like real resilience is being able to take constructive criticism without the emotions.

And so it's the sense of how quickly can I actually implement usable material instead of spending that energy to metabolize something that made my ego bruise. I have a practice that I do with my friends called the CCC. It's called the constructive criticism circle. And I think the greatest act of love that you can give anybody is to give them constructive criticism. If you love them and you know them well enough to give meaningful advice. Because anybody in the world can be like,

"Jay, I love your jacket. Like, I love you so smart. You're so interesting. That's not that difficult." Right? Anybody can say that. What's more difficult is for me to know you well enough to know what your goals are, what your shortcomings are, and to then help guide you and kind of like match those points in a way that you yourself didn't even see or know or are not ready to hear.

Like that is so much more meaningful and so much more powerful. It is like the deepest act of

service I could possibly imagine. And so you can imagine this is probably like not the most popular idea when I was like, "Hey guys, it's like Friday night. Let's all sit in a circle and like criticize each other." And it's like, "What? It sounds like a terrible idea." And I was like, "No, no, obviously the goal is not to insult another person." It's just like, "Hey, I know your goal is music. You're really passionate about this. You're really interested in it." But you'll keep

saying you're going to like put stuff out on TikTok. You're going to do like whatever to like reach people. But you're not very consistent with it. And you're not holding yourself to that standard. And I know that you could, you know, something like that. Or, "Hey, the other week,

“when you said this thing to this other person." It wasn't even to me. The, I think the other”

person kind of like bristled a little and you maybe you could have had a nicer tone of voice. You're like, "Ah, I didn't even know. There's so many things, big and small, that you genuinely don't even know." And that just cuts the work. It cuts the work if people can just tell you and you can be like, "Wow, okay, I'm just going to change it." And it's not about you. It's not like, "Oh, my ego's going to be hurt." What I'm talking about like correcting a trick. I'm not like, "Oh, no, my double

court is bad. I'm stupid." Right? I'm like, "Oh, no, my double court is bad. It's really bad." Like, that's it. That's the end of the sentence. There's no more extrapolation. There's no more like, and this is what it says about me as a human. It's like, "I'm rushing the trick. This is what I'm doing wrong. I'm not committing at this point. I'm not truly believing. Maybe it's not penetrating my subconscious layer." Whatever. That is not who I am. And so again, this is another thing that I

see in really successful people or athletes where it's really hard to distinguish those two things. So it's like if your career is going really well, you feel like you're really great. If your career is not going well, you feel like a failure. And for me, those are pretty separate things. Like, "I am me and my career is me." And also, that means when people say, "Oh, I lean you're so good at skiing. I don't translate that to like, "Oh, I lean you're so good." And so I don't really

“feel like I am all that, even if I think that my skiing is all that." I love that answer. And what's”

going to blow your mind is, I didn't have a cool name like CCC for it, but I made my friends do exactly the same thing a few years back. But no, he was my version. So what I said to them was, "I believe you've got to say to everyone in the room, this is my closest friend." Of course, you can only do it totally. So my closest group of friends from London that I grew up with, I said, "We have to say to each other's face the thing we all say behind each other's back." So if me and you

together and we're talking about our other friend and we'd be like, "Oh, he's really ambitious, but you know, we know he's not putting in enough work." We actually have to say that to him right now. Wow. And so that was what I made my friends doing a Friday night. And he was unbelievable. Unbelievable. And I could see who was scared by it, who was nervous about it, who really owned it,

to have vulnerability to tell someone the truth, and you've got to be humble enough to take it

yourself. And then you start seeing the exchange makes sense when everyone has permission. It was, so when you started to say that, I need to still your name. It's better, but I didn't have that for it. But I just felt it. I was like, we actually can't go to the next level in our relationship if we don't do this. Right. We all think we're close. We all pretend like we're close, but this is the test of actual intimacy, vulnerability, and friendship after 20 years that I've

been friends with some of these guys. So I'm totally aligned with it. I mean, you came up with it.

“But I've just never like, that's insane. Wow. But I agree with you. It's the only way of showing”

room care and depth and relationship. I love the way you framed it, too, because also didn't there's like a group aspect to it. I think it's harder if it's like one person, like put them on the spot. And then there's like kind of responsibility there. This is just like truly fostering like group connections and growth. That's so special. It's a much more sensitive way of doing that. I'm not doing it. Yours is, yours is better named. It's smart. I like it. I want to toss you. You've said before

evidence over information and explain that to me. I'm very realistic. And I think I definitely get that from my mom. But it was the sense of like, you want to shoot for the moon? Okay, how do you get there? Who's going to build the rocket ship? How are you going to design it? Who's going to power it? Like, how are you going to get there? Right? And so the sense of like, I can't convince myself that I'm going to do a backflip. You have to really know how to do it. Even if it's just conceptually,

because what's important is like, technically every time I learn a new trick, I'm doing something

that I've never done before. So there is that kind of like, final leap. But most of the work,

the basis, the bulk of it needs to be ready so that you have that 5%. It's a lot of people talk

“about like you make your own luck. And I think it's in the same vein where like you can only succeed”

in so far as you are prepared. And you're kind of setting your own ceiling there with the base that you have accumulated. And so yeah, I would say I ask 5%. The last 5%. But I feel good in the 95. And skiing because it's just so visceral and literal, where it's like the difference between success and failure is like quite literally broken bones and like top of the podium, right? And so it is so clearly defined and the difference in that is sometimes just the sense of like subconscious

buy-in. Do I feel like I had the reps, do I genuinely believe to my core? And so the top layer, I think, is the conscious thing. Anybody can convince themselves like, okay, I'm going to jump. That's easy. But like the subconscious thing of like buying in all the way down to actually commit the action. That is the true test of trust. And you can only build trust over repetition and over practice and true preparation. Yeah, you're saying that you can almost feel it. Yeah.

That subconscious in your body, your mind, your heart, your soul. Yeah. Whether you've actually bought into it rather than just repeating something that may make you feel better in the moment before you go out there. But everything about your body knows it's false and it's rejecting that idea. Exactly. And because it's so unnatural already and because it all happens so fast, like in skiing, the takeoff is like 0.1 seconds. But the angle of your body and the torque and

the timing determines everything. And so if you're timing is slightly off because you're nervous and you rush a trick, you can do the same thing, but you just rush it a little because literally just because you're nervous and it's game over. And so, of course, you're going to be nervous,

“but it's like controlling the degree. And so that's what I'm talking about with the buy-in.”

It literally happens so quickly that it's too fast for you to make the decision consciously. At the end of the day, the results will tell you what you really believe. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. Some of live's best moments happen because nothing went wrong. To drive home, the conversation that continues, the plans that stay exactly is planned. That's the feeling of safety. Every Mazda is designed with proactive safety features

that help keep you more aware, more connected and more engaged with your drive. So you can feel confident on the road. That's why Mazda has been named consumer reports safest new car brand. And as of July 2026, Dave won more 2026, I.I.H.S. top safety pick plus awards than any other car brand. Visit www.I.H.S.org to learn more. A lot can happen when an accident doesn't. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more. Consumer reports does not endorse products or services.

Talk to me a bit more about the technicalities of free skiing because I feel I've been fortunate enough to sit down with Novak and talk about tennis and talk to Louis Hamilton and Charles of the clerk about F1 and hearing about how much drive is loose weight and how much

their weight impacts the movement of the car and how fast they can move. I've never interviewed

someone who's a free skier before. Talk to me about that because as you start to talk about the

if you go too early or too late, talk to me a bit more about that of something as as a complete novice to this world I'd be unaware of so that we can really appreciate what's happening out there

“because I think we watch you and I've watched tapes of you and I'm like, how does she just”

do that? It's incredible but you almost undervalue because we're uneducated the physics behind it

and the amount of analytics behind pulling something like that are. Totally. A couple of things. One, the biggest saying you're hearing free skiing is patient on the takeoff and it's like the most frustrating thing to hear because it's so obvious and it's like a just do it sort of thing. But the reason why it's so frustrating is that because it's not conscious and it happens so quickly, a lot of it is like you're at the top and you're like, I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it

and not the very last thing and it's like, oh no, I bailed like I didn't do it and there is this almost sense of betrayal that happens in that moment because you're like, I swear like, why is my body betraying me and so so much of it is identifying the kinds of fear that you have. For me, I can like logic my way into things because I can understand like what different kinds of fear feel like in my body and so discerning that often is the difference between injury and success.

As far as mechanics go, this is kind of interesting because if you think about gymnastics, the body type is very different than my body type and so if you think about like the physics of rotation when you're moving that quickly and your center of gravity is much longer and higher and your limbs are a lot more dispersed. It means that the timing is even more precise and it's even harder to kind of grasp. It's just like there's so much of you in the air. On top of that,

it's an outdoor sport so like wind impacts you more and like, whether and like just all of these little things and so for me, I felt like because I'm so much taller than most of my competitors, I had to kind of be so hyper aware of these factors that were initially working against me. But then if you think about physics and you think about like a whip, the longer the whip is, the more force is generated at the very tip. So if I can get the timing right,

technically I can generate more force. It's just harder to do it. So I just have to be so precise and I was very aware about that from the beginning. And how you keep in time is it something you're counting in your mind is it of feeling in your body like, where's time because you can't see anything. I visualize a lot and when I visualize, I visualize in four angles or like dimensions. I will do follow-cam, I will do deck angle, I will do my POV and then top angle.

Then I will do fast motion and slow motion and get this, I will do all-black proprioception. So it's like I will visualize what the G forces feel on my body, pulling apart at certain points

in the air and that will help with my timing and grounding because the first time you do a trick,

you can't see anything, just visually, right? So you really have to trust. That's another thing,

“you have to trust. When you can't see anything you're totally blind, you have to trust in this,”

your body is going to do something but it hasn't even done it before also. So like how can you trust that, right? So there's something kind of counterintuitive about that. And so the faster you can reconcile that, that's what makes a trick safe. So I do so much visualization. I just think. And that visualization is based on you watching footage of yourself. Watching footage of myself. So what the different angles and cams look like, there's four that you

experience. Yes. And what's interesting also is sometimes I'm the first woman to ever do a trick. And so that adds complexity also because then I'm watching videos of men and of course there's going to be differences in those mechanics too. And so I have to be noticing what points I can kind of take and what I have to innovate almost on my own, just given my own, you know, phenotypes there. Yeah. So there's kind of like intricacy there. I would say also we do have like foam pits,

we have airbags. So like that helps a lot. But really doing something on snow for the first time, there's something, I mean, yeah, like when is the last time you felt like genuine fear? And I think a lot of people would struggle to think of the last time. But in skiing it's like every day, literally every day. I'm so glad to ask that question and thank you for taking us into your mind. I want to take you back to the moment you won your gold medal at the Milan Olympics.

And that was such an incredible moment. Walk me through the euphoria felt you're just talking

“about the fear you feel, the trust you have to have the looking at it from four angles, the surrender”

in that moment, talk to me about how that felt. I think it's really important to contextualize that moment, actually. So in free skiing, there are three disciplines, a half-pipe slope style and bigger. I'm the only woman who competes in all three. What's particular about that is no other woman who competes in half-pipe at the Olympics competed in any other event. So it's like one event versus three events. And if each event is a week long, you're skiing every day,

the accumulated fatigue that just emotional joint. You're literally having the highest highs

sometimes it's in the morning. You're in, it'll be like everything is kind of just different and foreign and you're managing so much load. The last part is the Olympics actually scheduled my trainings overlapping because they thought that it wasn't possible, essentially, to do all three events. And so I tried to petition it, obviously it didn't work. So since I made finals and actually ended up meddling in big air, which is the event before, I actually missed out on a training

in half-pipe. And there's only three. And then very lastly, it supposedly never snows in this

early. But of course, if you wanted to snows, get your the Olympics, right? So it was scheduled for night originally, and so you can imagine your adrenaline super high all day. You're like, okay, this is like the culmination I'm gathering, all of my strength, all of my energy. I've competed five times already, qualities and finals for the other two events and the qualifiers. Last minute, like an hour before training starts for the contest, they say, okay, we're canceling it. Like

it's moving to another day. And what's even crazier is they said, if we can't do it, we're just going to take qualifier results. And I had fallen in qualifiers. I got fifth. I was calling my fifth place. I've never done that before. Like almost always qualifying the top one or two. And so I was just like losing my mic because I was already so tired that I was like, just make finals, just make finals, like land something and make finals. And I did, but I was in fifth. And so I was just,

you can imagine crashing out all night. And then the next morning, like thank goodness, it went ahead. So I'm going into this contest very frazzled. Like I am not in peak form. I am just really holding

on by a thread. And this has never happened before in other contests. But for some reason,

at the Olympics, I fell on my first run in every single contest. I don't know what the reason was. I genuinely have this theory that like, I need to like wake up. And there's something so otherworldly and surreal about being at the Olympics that I needed something so harsh that my body to be like, you're actually here, like wake up, lock in to be like, okay, I'm here.

“And like, jolt me into reality. I have no idea what that situation was. That's what I've kind of”

decided was the case. So needless to say, I fall on my first run. And now I'm in last. And this is supposed to be like my, you know, best event. I haven't lost a final in this event in seven years. So there's four events. There's men's and women's skin snowboard. So four events total. The favorites for the other three, none of them won. And so of course, I'm going into the last event. I'm like, okay, great. This is not voting well for me. And so she was just so much

doubt. And just even if I was so prepared, I've never felt dealt like that before. And I just

remember at the top, being like, please, please, like, just get the feeling, get the feeling. Because I talked about like having that switch. And I just wasn't getting it. I was like, I don't know where I am. Like where she is. Like the competitor, like, I don't know where she went. Like, it's, I'm maybe I'm too tired. Maybe like something's going on. I'm like burnt out from five other events. I don't know. I like couldn't find her. And before my first run, I actually knew I was going

to fall. Like, I knew I was not going to land it because I was just not in my competitive hands, headspace. And I remember going up to the front, I was like, okay, there it is. Like there's a moment, hold on to it. Hold on to it. Like, I found it. I found it. I get to the front. And they're like, commercial break eight minutes. Oh my god. And I'm just like, are you kidding me? So there's video of me, like, fake punching a wall. I'm like running alone, like staring at a corner, just doing absurd

things to try and just get myself into this like headspace and it's very narrow and it's fleeting. And I was there and now I'm not. And I'm just losing it. And then it just clicks. And I'm like, hold it for 30 seconds. And I do. And as soon as I land, I'm like, okay, I won. You knew. I knew it. And then I went back up and did a better run. And then got the two highest scores of the contest

“and ended up winning. But what was really important, I think about that contest is it was not about”

my skill. It was totally me versus me. It was like, I could have just not landed a run. And it would have been me betraying myself. And so much of it came down to trust and willfulness of just like, how consciously can you enter a flow state, which is totally counterintuitive. And just can't do that. And so this is like the next best thing. And all I can say was extremely difficult. And when I fell to the ground and started crying, it was because I was totally spent. It was just like nothing I've

ever done before. Yeah, it was really difficult. Guys, I'm really, well, thank you for walking us through play by play because you just don't get that insight. I mean, there needs to be a documentary on this. I hope you're working on it. Do you need to be able to see that just that kind of stop start, stop start, stop start, that what it does to an athlete's mind, even when you're so clear, even when you're so focused and driven and trained and prepared, there's so much to it.

“Moments later from winning your whole day changes. Yes. You get some big news. I remember watching”

that press conference. We see you breaking the tears. Talk to me about that moment and experiencing both that incredible high after so much sacrifice training, prep all the ups and

This is like my first time really speaking about this publicly since. And it's just been so

hard for me to metabolize after all this time because like you said, it's the highest high in the lowest low separated by matter of minutes. Oh, my grandma had been sick for a long time and we knew that there was a chance that it was our last time saying goodbye to her when I left for the Olympics. And so I said all the things that I wanted to say to her, I told her I would be brave for her and made her a bunch of promises essentially. But my mom and I had actually spoken about it and we

agreed that if something had happened to my grandma during the Olympics, I didn't want to know during the contest because it has happened and mourning prematurely and just like ruining this experience that I've trained for four years, like it's not going to help. I just cannot believe that my mom knew the whole time during my other events and did not break a sweat or a tear or anything and she was so strong in the entire time that is unbelievable to me. Like it's her mother.

That is just absurd. Like I genuinely cannot wrap my head around that. I actually get her emails and so I checked my phone right after I had won. We hadn't done the podium ceremony yet and so I saw an email from the funeral home and I just knew and it was just like my ground was like fracking out from underneath me and it's like you think your reality is what it is until something just comes along and makes you feel like you were living in like a little fishbowl. I thought the

“Olympics was the most important single event that I could possibly imagine. I couldn't think of”

something that would be more gripping and compelling than that and all of a sudden I was like this doesn't matter and all of a sudden the thing that I held to be like the epitome of all of life just like fell away underneath me and so that was a very disorienting and like extremely earth-shattering. Also I had to do the press conference. I couldn't skip this press conference and so I like took a moment to mourn with my mom and then we just went to this press conference and so

I actually think that those like viral interviews where I have the gold bow in my hair because that was I had that in my pocket. I was like a lucky thing and like I was like oh in case I went I'm going to put it in my hair to like represent femininity on the world stage in this you know like male domain sport. All of those gold bow interviews I actually knew already and so when I'm smiling and talking about neuroplasticity and when I'm smiling and talking about like oh I'm going to

continue competing like this is what I love to do. That was all so compartmentalized and then

at the very end I wanted to like honor her and say hey by the way one of the most important people

in my life just passed away. I promised her I'd be super brave. I wanted to uphold the promises that I made to her and it like this is my moment of closure. I broke down during that but like I had to just turn something off in my brain to get through that press conference and then you can imagine afterwards it was just devastating and then it was just horrible like there were people online who were like why is she at you know this event when she's like skipping her grandma's

funeral like horrible horrible things where I was like I will take just about any kind of hate but like you are not going to put my brain mother's name and you're about in this situation like that is just like a line I would not cross. So I did keep or warrior a little bit on that but yeah I planned my grandma's funeral. I found the choir for it. I found selected the Bible verses for it. I picked the flowers. I did the ceremony. I did all the invites. It's my mom's mom. It's my grandma.

“It was really difficult but I could not ask my mom to do that and so I think my act of service”

to my family and like to the honor to like honor my grandma was in service of that and so yeah I had to do a bunch of things after the Olympics for like a week or two but immediately after moving back for the funeral I had planned everything and we'd metabolized it and that was just so challenging for for the days after the Olympics. I would say that you showing both those sides of yourself when you're answering the questions about neuroplasticity in your mindset are you as your

superhuman self and then you being honest about the loss of one of the most important women in

your life was the most human thing you could have done and to me seeing those both on center stage as a goal to Olympic winner to me there's nothing more powerful that could set a better standard for young athletes and young people all over the world. I mean to be superhuman and human in the same breath. That's my grandma just generally her. I'm gonna end on a final five these questions I've drawn to them one sentence maximum. So I'll go these are final five. Question number one,

what is the best advice you've ever heard or received? It will never be embarrassing to try.

“Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?”

Waking up at four in the morning makes you more productive. That's good. Question number three, you're advice for young women today. Define your own category. Meaning for women there's a lot of

girl just like it can feel very rigid and so I think it's like define your own categories.

“You can be anyone. Question for when you have a crash out or a bad day, what is Ilingue do?”

Cry. Oh my god, I cry. I cry so much and I think it's great. I think it's the most efficient way

that you can release emotion and return to like a logical state. The sooner you can get the

“irrational out, the better. Also, I run a lot. So both of those sometimes at the same time.”

Running and crying well, all right. When it's really bad. Yeah, fifth and final question, we asked this to every guest has ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? Maybe some kind of like

“independent study program early, like at age 7 or 8, you have to like pick a project and stick”

with it for a year. And it's not in like a career, you know, it's not like every 7 year old needs an internship. But some kind of like self guided high agency exploration that values curiosity. Ilingue, I know you're extremely busy. I'm so grateful for your time. You're present to energy. I hope this is a start of a great friendship and wish you all the best in rooting for you in your corner. And here whenever you need. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really,

really am so grateful for our conversation today. I feel like I learned so much. I'm so excited.

I feel invigorated. Amazing. Thank you.