谷爱凌IWC访谈录 | Eileen Gu interview with IWC

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free skiing I mean that's an extreme sport can you tell us a bit what it is because I think not everyone around the globe really knows what that discipline

really is so free skiing is you're on skis um and the skis look a little bit different from race skis or your typical

rental skis because they are twin tips so the front goes up and the back also goes up so that allows you to ski switch or backwards um and you'll need to ski backwards because the whole discipline

surrounds it's pretty much like gymnastics um on skis you're doing flips you're doing spins um there's a halfpipe which is shaped like this and you jump

out and back in and then there's another dis called slope style which is jumps and rails and then finally the last discipline is called Big Air which is

just one big jump and in terms of skiing what makes it different from anything else is that it is very expressive it's very creative in terms of gymnastics

right it's beautiful it's so difficult but at the same time there are set difficulties for different tricks whereas in skiing there is no score based on only difficulty at score scored

on difficulty amplitude execution um variety and style so if you do it differently than anybody else it'll score higher even if you're doing the same trick and everybody will do that

trick differently and so in that way it makes it really interesting because it allows for a lot of freedom and creativity and self-expression um and it allows you to kind of personalize your own skiing I always like to say that if

everybody was wearing black and everybody was doing the same trick and I was watching from a far distance I would be able to tell who is who because you can really show your own your own style and influence into skiing so that's what

I love so much about it you achieved your first World Cup victory in Italy in 2019 when you were only 15 what has happened since

then wow um a lot has happened since then I would say I think what's really fun is because things have happened so fast I definitely still have the kind of

Underdog mentality in the sense that I now have enough confidence to enter any competition and have the intention to win but also not really the age or the

time experience to really expect it so what that means is I feel like I'm it's created a really healthy mindset for me competitively um I have won X Games I've

won World Championships I've made history as the first person of Chinese descent to ever win X Games I'm the first female rookie to ever win three medals at X Games um I'm the first fale

fale rookie to win a ski halfpipe one of my biggest goals in skiing has always been to inspire young girls especially um young Asian-American girls or young

girls who don't really see representation in our sport yet and so that is really exciting to me because I've always had that as a goal but being able to see those records being broken

and see myself taking those steps towards it is kind of a mindbending moment for me so it's happened really fast but I'm really grateful for all the people who've been around me my sponsors

IWC my family my mom um my coaches who who supported me the whole time right sometimes you feel like as a young person you feel like oh I have to wait until I'm older before I can really make

change or before I can really do things that are important and impactful to the world but really I think it's important to be a young person and to show that age doesn't dictate capability um and

that experience teaches more than anything else and so yeah I think that is my biggest school and it's something that I wish I had more of growing up but

also I'm really grateful because I grew up in a very healthy and supportive environment with my mom and my grandma who are both incredibly empowered women um and who served as the role models

that I didn't really see on TV or in this sport or other extreme sports for that matter so I wanted to be kind of the one to introduce skiing to people to show people the joy of it and so that

when people think of free skiing they don't think of a older white man they think of a young worldly biracial girl

who is bubbly and likes to do a bunch of different things and has this genuine passion for the sport and that was probably my biggest goal and now you

know looking in China it absolutely has paid off I see before there were nobody at the ski resorts I knew everybody who free skied in China because there were only a handful of them there were probably 20 or 30 people in the whole country who knew about it and who were

really doing the sport and now you know I could never count I show up to a resort and there just lines everywhere and people are with their families and their friends and everyone's having a great time and so it's really exploding

so um I'm really glad to have even made a small impact in that you often say that you um Asian American background has shaped your character could you

describe that a bit what it really taught you I think that growing up between two different cultures helped me a lot with diversity and with

understanding and learning in the sense that I was very aware of the similarities and differences of culture from a very young age so by the age of

three I was fully bilingual and I was noticing the little differences in the kinds of food but also in the way that people interacted over dinner or hot water versus cold water right the age-

old debate and so um growing up in that environment I think has has allowed me to then become more receptive of even more cultures as I grow older so now

coming to Europe more often or traveling to different cities with kind of different traditions in their own geographical locations has it's made me

more receptive to that and made me appreciate it more I think so it's something that has allowed me to accept differences more easily and something that has allowed me to celebrate

cross-cultural friendship more easily and so those are both things that I continue to try to promote what does empowering women mean to

you I grew up in a all girls K through 8 school and I loved my experience there so much when I started free skiing I was

the only girl on my team and it was such a incredibly harsh culture shock and dichotomy when from Monday through Friday I would be with all girls and on Saturday and Sunday when I went skiing I

would be the only girl and so in that sense I became hyper aware of my gender and my expression because I felt like in the beginning all of a sudden everybody

around me was male and when I looked at the great Idols of skiing all of them were male too and so kind of feeling should I be ashamed of my femininity should I try to be more like the boy

should I dress like them should I talk like them and would that make me more accepted would that make me better at skiing would that you know these kind of questions went through my mind at a very young age and I'm really grateful that I

had that super strong and empowering educational environment um during the weekdays because I think that it could

have been pretty detrimental to my kind of esteem as a female if I hadn't had that foundational support but I did and

so instead of kind of crushing it down I learned to to celebrate differences right and to to kind of communicate and make friends and use skiing as a way to

create bonds and to create friendship and so that was a big learning opportunity for me and it was also a way for me to kind of embrace being a woman

and to embrace the innate power that we have as in individuals and so yeah it it has always been really important to me in seventh grade I gave my first speech

on women in sports it later got used as a voiceover for an international brand for their International women's day um commercial and since then you know in high school I've

LED workshops for women in sports um I've LED discussions and workshops about female athletes and their portrayal in the media and that how that affects people's perception of female athletes I think that these are all really

important questions that now more than ever we should be asking ourselves and questions about um inclusion and diversity should always be involved in that conversation as well we know that social media is really influencing and

forming um the opinions of of many people so um where do you see the benefit of social media social media is

a double-edged sword right because I think that especially in my generation everybody has social media everybody uses it as their primary source of information it's the way that you

consciously or subconsciously view what is trendy or what is cool or how to live your life or kind of what goals to set and so that

last piece I think can be extremely beautiful and extremely inspiring or it can be extremely detrimental de depending on which side you end up on um

and so in terms of the extremely beautiful side it shows you what's possible Right like through skiing a lot of so many people had never heard of skiing before and maybe they are scrolling on their discover page or

whatever and then they see a video of me skiing they're like wow this looks great this looks fun this looks cool I want to try this boom maybe that changed their life it would have changed mine for sure and so I think that there's that side or

they see someone doing something who they didn't think was possible and suddenly they feel inspired and they think huh if she can do it maybe I can try it too or maybe I can enjoy that too she looks like she's having fun why

don't I give it a shot right that's the best thing life is all about Joy right so they you can find all these different ways to find Joy through social media it it expands your perspective and it shows

you what's possible on the other hand there's the toxic hurtful beauty standards that can impact young women and men everywhere where um by seeing

unrealistic Beauty expectations or um kind of Lifestyles and unrealistic portrayals of joy that they think maybe if I looked a certain way or had a different amount of money or lived in a

different place or had a different job or were born into a different setting then maybe I would be happy but I think what social media can really obscure are the beautiful imperfections of reality

so it's it's a double-edged sword and so in that sense I always try to make my social media as authentic as possible um every few months I'll do like a question and answer thing to to kind of show the

more real sides of myself because on one hand I'm not going to post hey guys today I had a bad day period and that's it like today I fell and it hurt and I didn't feel too great like I'm probably

not going to post that but I do want to kind of show that occasionally and so I do want to make an effort to converse with people and really say you know I'm not perfect all the time and that's what makes everything fun because if you were perfect all the time then you would to

that and that would be your normal and then you wouldn't feel perfect anymore and so in that sense you got to have both sides and social media is a great way to to spread information about both

I couldn't agree more but there is this other part you know when you're criticized how do you how do you work on this how do we act on this you know when you when you have critical feedback when

I first started getting hate I used to search for it um I think that it's so much easier to hold on to negativity than positivity um and I really love psychology so I've read a lot of stuff

about this and how kind of as animals the animal brain goes like Oh my God there's danger it's more beneficial to remember where the danger is because you want to avoid being hunted if you can

remember where the super sweet tasting berries were hidden in the forest that's great bonus points but like you'd rather remember where the Predator's cave is right and so it's a lot easier to

remember the negative parts and that really is embedded into you because you could have a th really positive messages and maybe 10 negative comments but you will remember the 10 negative comments

and you will hold on to it and grain it into yourself and repeat that to yourself and so it's really easy to get into that cycle and when I first started getting hate I definitely was looped

into that cycle um but you know now I really think that I don't really pay it too much mind because at the end of the day it's my life like I'm in control of

my life right if you don't like what I'm doing you don't have my life like oh you don't like my new trick then don't do it like great you know that's good for you everybody's entitled to their opinion

but I'm entitled to not listen as well and so um it's it's kind of the sense of I can do my thing and you can like it or you don't have to uh my goal is to

spread positivity if your goal is to spread negativity do that it's your prerogative but I'm not going to have any part in it so that's kind of My Philosophy now and now we we talk a bit about the shared

values we just um welcomed you as a member of that received family which Val values do you think that we we share that you share with our brand there are several values that I share with IWC one

of them um is truly being a world citizen like we mentioned before it's you know IWC is literally International watch companies so it's you know it's

International it's got different people from all over the world I think it was 55 countries um you have employees from and so there are so many different

perspectives and cultures and ideas that are going into the design the creation and the production of all of these gorgeous watches and so there is that aspect which I really love another is

sustainability which is really important to me especially as a winter sports athlete right with global warming our sport is the first one to see the changes and our sport is the first one to go even now um over the years we can

really notice it maybe over the summer or in the fall we used to go to a few locations and we'd be able to ski for months and now we can only ski shorter and shorter every year suddenly it was

over 100° Fahrenheit at a glacier when everybody was supposed to be skiing and instead people couldn't even leave their houses because there was a heat wave and so things like that are really impacting the sport so being able to hear about

iwc's initiative um I was just chatting to someone about it about there was like a 95% paper like compacted paper watch

band that IWC is working on um and so it looks Chic you look at it and it's gorgeous and the design is spectacular but also you know that it is sustainably

made and that it is something that is made to be carried through generations and that itself is really environmentally friendly it's very beautiful what you say about um the way

we work and the sustainability topic as well um as you just mentioned I mean our watches are built to last for Generations so everything that go into the watch on the entire way from the

Sketchbook to the wrist needs to be most responsibly done and talking about your generation now and talking about your thoughts what do you think you know uh

is now your generation yourself would you change now to to to actually go into a better a better direction for for us and our

planet someone wants told me that we don't need one person to do everything perfectly for the planet we need everybody to do everything imperfectly but at least try right we don't need one

person to hit 100% we need everybody to hit 70% and that is how impact is made so maybe you know it's one day I drank

from one plastic bottle I feel not the best I should have brought my own bottle but you know it's not that one bottle that is destroying the planet it's kind

of everybody's combined like ignoring that kind of aspect if every everybody cared more you know then the difference would be made in that sense so it comes differently

for different kinds of people um depending on people's Lifestyles you know choosing different modes of transportation if possible or um eating a little bit differently if possible or

um you know buying avoiding fast fashion or buying sustainably made products and it's it looks different for different kinds of people and that is what's important about it right it's different

approaches so that's kind of my perspective especially for young people because it's our planet to be inherited ultimately and as Planet change is

exponentially growing then the impact is very urgent it's very urgent for us to make change in our generation before things get out of hand even more I agree

and I mean we have um a lot of possibilities to to for a choice right I mean we can choose as you just described it and these are the little things as well which matter a lot and to think

before we act and there is another topic uh which I would have never guessed you know that you are a big fan of the Blue Angels of the US Navy flight

demonstrations quadron how come yeah I mean growing up in San Francisco the Blue Angels would perform every year and I remember when I was gosh I was

probably in second grade um and they came to our school to to talk to us and I remember I came home so excited I was telling my mom about the different formation they flew in and the number of

people they had and the people who I had met and so the next year um I was pointing them out to my mom and my grandma and I was telling them all about it and it was it was really exciting for me and now you know we watch them every

year from our balcony because we see them we live like right under where where they are so it's really a spectacular sight to see and also you know I'm a little bit biased because I

am an adrenaline addict so given the nature of my Sport and also the nature of flying upside down in a plane like it definitely goes together um maybe at

some point you know it would be a dream to go in uh go in one of the planes myself but it is spectacular to watch and therefore it's always very

interesting to talk about time in your discipline as a free gear time might not be the most important element as you just described it but what does time

mean to you I actually have always been really fascinated by time that was actually one of the first entries in my journal and I write about it quite frequently and I

think that ever since I was little I've always been very aware of the passage of time which I know is an odd topic for an eight or nine-year-old to be talking about but I would often bring it up with

my mother and she feel like are you okay like like something like why is this what you're thinking about why are you not thinking about like toys or something

like why are you talking to me about like inevitable posage of time you're a child but I always thought it was so fascinating right because it's the one constant it should be the one constant

and yet it doesn't feel like that because you know when you're little one year feels like so much and right now especially as I'm growing older and I'm going through my teenage years I'm growing into myself and becoming more

self-aware during my adolescence I think that I'm hyper aware of all the changes that are um occurring in my own life and the relationship of time to those changes

so I think that it's really such a fascinating thing and you know the whole time flies when you're having fun sort of sort of thing and growing up as a runner and also a skier I used to think

about this all the time because if I'm running for an hour it feels like a pretty long time if I haven't been training but when I start training again and I become I get into better shape suddenly I feel like wow like it's a

breeze an hour it feels so nice and then when I'm skiing it feels like a blink of an eye like I don't even know I do like a few tricks I'm talking to my friends and suddenly an hour is gone and so

really um being able to to keep an eye on it I think is something that I am very fascinated in and that's why it's really exciting to be partnering with IWC

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