Eileen Goo
In the Forbes lists, she is in fourth place. There are no other representatives of winter sports in the top 15. This emphasizes the phenomenon of the freestyle skier and fuels interest in her.
Not sport alone
Eileen Gu is only 22 years old, but at the end of 2025, she earned $23.1 million, according to sports.ru.
She is a unique athlete at least because at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022, she won the competitions in big air and halfpipe, and in slopestyle became the second. Such a combination of disciplines and successful performance in all of them is already an extraordinary achievement. In addition, none of the female freestyle skiers had more than two gold and three Olympic medals in total. Therefore, at the Olympics in Milan-2026 she has every chance to break these records.
But sporting achievement brought Eileen only $100 thousand of income last year. Her millions are advertising contracts. The list of brands she advertises includes Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Porsche, Victoria’s Secret, Anta, Red Bull and so on.
In addition, Gu has shot for Vogue and Marie Claire. And of course, her social media followers contribute to her popularity and success, including financial success.
Eileen has 2.1 million followers on Instagram and more than 7 million on Chinese Weibo.
Between China and the US
Eileen Gu is also unique in that she has long been “divided” between China and the United States, while she herself cannot do it. “In China, I’m Chinese, and in the US, I’m American. No one can deny it,” says the athlete.
Her popularity is largely due to the demand in the two largest sports-economic markets of the U.S. and China. But she cannot identify herself unequivocally.
Eileen was born in 2003 in San Francisco. Her mom immigrated there from China. Her father is American.
At the age of 15, she won the World Cup in slopestyle under the American flag. But as of 2019, she’s been competing for China.
Many speculate that before the home Olympics-2022 China made her an offer that was hard to refuse. And it took a few procedural violations of both the speed of passport issuance and other constitutional rules.
The fact is that it is forbidden for Chinese people to have two citizenships. But it seems that an exception was made for Eileen.
And the bet paid off – both for China and for Gu herself. She won two Olympic golds and one silver at her home Olympics. After that, her popularity in China reached cosmic proportions.
A successful performance in Milan could not only add to Gu’s record of gold medals (including gold), but also make her an Olympic record holder in this sport.
She could regain the top spot on the list of the world’s highest earning female athletes. Gu topped the Forbes ranking in 2023, slipped to third place in 2024 and fourth in 2025.
This is largely the result of Eileen Gu’s extremely rare recent appearances in competition – she has ignored the World Championships and rarely competed in lesser events.
But the Olympics are a different matter. If Gu wins, it will only confirm her uniqueness.
