Freestyle skier Eileen Gu says she suffered ‘post-Olympic depression’: ‘You can win the Olympics and still just enter the deepest rut of your life’

Even the world’s record-breaking athletes are not immune to the lows of grappling with burnout and mental health challenges.

Freestyle skier and Olympic champion Eileen Gu said following the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing—where she won two gold medals and one silver for China at age 18—she was hit with a wave of burnout and anxiety, a feeling shared by many other elite athletes.

“There’s this thing called post-Olympic depression, and it’s like, very common among athletes, a pretty well-known phenomenon.