Freestyle skier Eileen Gu says she suffered ‘post-Olympic despair’: ‘You possibly can win the Olympics and nonetheless simply enter the deepest rut of your life’ | Fortune – Company Technique & Outlook

Freestyle skier and Olympic champion Eileen Gu mentioned following the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing—the place she gained two gold medals and one silver for China at age 18—she was hit with a wave of burnout and nervousness, a sense shared by many different elite athletes.

“There’s this factor known as post-Olympic despair, and it’s like, quite common amongst athletes, a fairly well-known phenomenon. However the attention-grabbing factor is, it’s in no way correlated to outcomes,” Gu mentioned in a June 2025 episode of The Burnouts podcast hosted by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni. “That’s what’s sort of shocking to folks, is like, you possibly can win the Olympics and nonetheless simply enter the deepest rut of your life and simply actually be questioning every little thing, your goal.”

“[You] really feel so burnt out, however on the identical time simply have all this nervousness and pent up vitality, undecided the place to direct it,” she continued. “And I used to be no exception.” 

At 22-years-old, Gu’s accomplishments have already mounted. Other than being the youngest Olympic champion in freestyle snowboarding, Gu additionally attends Stanford College, having scored a 1580 on her SAT. Her modeling has led her to turn into a founding member of Victoria’s Secret’s VS Collective serving to to reshape the model’s picture, and he or she was not too long ago featured on the quilt of Time journal. The Chinese language-American athlete earns $23 million per yr, however solely a fraction of it comes from her illustrious snowboarding profession. She has had endorsement offers with Porsche, Crimson Bull, and IWC Schaffhausen, in addition to Chinese language manufacturers like Anta Sports activities and Luckin Espresso.

Born in San Francisco and raised by her mom, a first-generation Chinese language immigrant, Gu competes beneath the Chinese language flag. On the Winter Olympics in Milan, she is ready to compete within the ladies’s slopestyle, massive air, and halfpipe. The sport started on Wednesday, with the gold medal occasions beginning on Feb. 7.

Gu mentioned she reached her lowest level six months after the 2022 Olympics, when, regardless of her success, she turned overwhelmed by how she was imagined to take her subsequent steps.

“You’re working your total life in direction of this one huge purpose,” she mentioned. “You’re 18, you’re feeling such as you’re on high of the world, and you then hit this gap.”

How athletes navigate post-Olympic despair

It’s not simply Gu who has skilled the come-down from victory on the international video games. A 2023 examine of 49 Danish Olympic athletes discovered greater than 1 / 4 of opponents reported beneath common wellbeing or average to extreme despair, with 16% of members reporting each. Feminine athletes had larger despair scores than their male counterparts.

Among the many athletes who’ve grappled with the “post-Olympic blues” is American swimmer Michael Phelps, who has 28 complete Olympics medals, together with a report 23 gold medals from 5 Olympic video games. He informed NBC Information’ “Meet the Press” in 2024 he struggled with the post-game blues as early as his second Olympics in 2004, when he gained six gold medals and two bronze medals.

“2004 was my first style of post-Olympic despair, you realize, coming off such a excessive,” he informed NBC. “It’s mainly… you get to love the sting of a cliff, like ‘Cool now what? Oh, I assume I’ve acquired to attend 4 extra years to have the possibility to do it once more.’”

Karen Howells, a sports activities psychologist, mentioned these athletes could also be experiencing the blues after a really particular expertise and the years of coaching main as much as it, however many can relate to the interval of reorientation following a giant occasion, even a profitable one.

“It’s regular that once we construct as much as one thing, after which it’s over, we’re going to really feel misplaced and upset,” Howells informed The Athletic. “There could also be anger, frustration, irritation.”

Gu mentioned she navigated burnout by in search of counsel in her help system of her mom and associates, who provide recommendation, regardless of Gu treading unfamiliar—and unprecedented—territory in her record-breaking profession.

“Searching for mentorship in a holistic sense is typically difficult, as a result of loads of the issues I do sort of are the primary time somebody’s doing it in the way in which that I’m doing it,” Gu mentioned. “However there are individuals who’ve gone by means of actually unimaginable experiences, and everybody’s distinctive.”

Gu not too long ago took day without work following accidents, one thing her mom has inspired her to do.

“My mother—I feel folks suppose that she’s like, loopy tiger mother, however she’s really the other—she’s like, reverse tiger-momming me and being like, ‘When are you going to drop out? When are you going to take day without work?’” Gu mentioned.