- READ MORE: Meet Zoe Atkin – the Stanford University student who won bronze
Zoe Atkin brought down the curtain on Team GB’s record-breaking trip to the Winter Olympics with a halfpipe bronze medal on Sunday. Although it equalled the shade won by her sister eight years ago, matching Eileen Gu proved impossible.
The American-turned-Chinese athlete, a divisive figure in the US and imperious on snow, retained the gold she collected in Beijing four years ago with one of the finest performances at these Games.
For Atkin, the world champion and recent winner of the X Games, there was no shame in falling short of such a standard. She led after the first of three runs, improved her score to 92.5 points on the third, and missed silver by just 0.5 behind Chinese skier in Li Fanghui. Gu was well clear on 94.75 and would have won with her second best effort, too.
The significance for Team GB is that it enabled them to level their haul from Pyeongchang 2018 on five medals. As a quirk, one of those medals was collected by Atkin’s elder sibling, Izzy, but this was the edition where the Brits left a more meaningful mark, given the unprecedented high of three golds.
Zoe Atkin won Team GB’s fifth medal of the Winter Olympics as she took bronze in the freeski halfpipe final
Atkin (in action during the final) matched the medal her sister Izzy won eight years ago
Eileen Gu won the gold medal having taken silver in the slopestyle and big air at this Games
Atkin, US-born to British father and a Malaysian mother, said: ‘I wanted to one up my sister so bad. Watching her in 2018 has always been such a big moment of inspiration for me and she’s always been my biggest role model, so it was full circle to have her watching me here and supporting me.
‘It’s just really special to kind of share that with her. I can’t even begin to describe the roller coaster of emotions it is here at the Olympics. I was so stressed out today and so nervous.’
Atkin, 23, will now return to complete her university studies at Stanford, as will Gu. One will be accompanied by more noise than the other – Gu’s switch in national allegiances ahead of the Beijing Olympics ramped her endorsement earnings beyond £20m a year and also attracted plenty of fury in the US. US vice president JD Vance joined the chorus in recent days, which will likely prove unhelpful in lowering that temperature.
After adding gold to the two silvers won earlier in the Games, not counting two golds in Beijing, Gu has afforded herself the final say, but these are strange times in US politics. As a 22-year-old caught in the middle of one of their many blizzards, it is to her advantage that she knows how to handle herself on skis.
‘I walk away as the most decorated free skier of all time, male or female, and the most gold medals of any free skier ever, male or female,’ she said. ‘That is something I’m proud of. It’s unbelievable to me. It’s still surreal.’