Eileen Gu 'unable to walk' after injury

China's Olympic freestyle skier Eileen Gu was prepared to make her mark at the 2025 Winter X Games. Not having competed in 2023, Gu captured the Ski SuperPipe title in 2024 and fans expected the champion to defend her title this year. Unfortunately, despite making it to Aspen, the skier posted some disheartening news on Instagram.

After suffering a fall during the Streetstyle event, the 21-year-old said that she was “okay but unable to walk at this point in time due to some really aggressive bruising on that last crash.”

The official 2025 X Games site reflected Gu’s final placing at the event as 4th. The 12-hour training session for multiple events made the entire endeavor unsustainable. What’s more, the two-time world champion had just recovered from five days of fever before taking on her grueling cumulative training sessions ahead of the X Games. Coincidentally, this isn’t the first time California-born Chinese skiing superstar had to withdraw from the X Games due to injury.

While Gu did win the 2024 Ski SuperPipe event at the X Games, she took “a heavy hit” to her hip during training and skied herself onto the podium while experiencing “unprecedented pain,” she wrote on social media. Gu didn’t elaborate on how long it will take her to recover. However, the injury could spell trouble for her plans to compete at the 9th Asian Winter Games in Harbin, starting Feb. 7.