Eileen Gu claims Big Air silver and becomes the most decorated freeskier in Olympic history. Naomi Urness and Liu Mengting deliver standout performances in a dramatic, blizzard-hit evening in Livigno.
The Alps tried their best to shut it down. Fresh snow had been falling all day, the kind of heavy, relentless blizzard that blankets everything and makes competition organisers sweat. By evening, the wind had picked up, sweeping through Livigno Snow Park and forcing a 75-minute delay while crews scrambled with snowblowers to reclaim the course.
None of it undermined how thrilling this evening final would be; arguably one of the best of the entire Games. To round it off, Eileen Gu is now the most decorated freeskier of all time.
Run 1 set the tone. Gu launched a double 14 safety off the kicker and posted a score that put her immediately in the conversation. The intent was clear from the moment she dropped in: she hadn't come to Livigno to watch someone else make history.
Run 2 brought a strategic change of trick, and it didn't land the way she needed it to. A loose grab, a rough landing, and a score of 61.25 that left her more exposed than she would have liked heading into the final attempt. Another athlete might have played it safe. Gu went back to the double 12 tail on run three and nailed it. 89 points. A combined total of 179.00. Silver medal.
Her second Silver at these Games makes Eileen Gu the most decorated female freeskier in Olympic history. Five medals across five events at two Olympic Games. At 22 years old.
Despite the Big Air gold eluding her this time, the record is hers deservedly. Given the level of skiing she produced under blizzard conditions, on an evening where nothing was straightforward, the performance itself deserves as much attention as the scoreboard.
If Gu's night was about cementing a legacy, Naomi Urness's was about building one.
The 21-year-old Canadian had already turned heads in slopestyle, making the Olympic final in her debut season. In Big Air, she showed up with more. Run 1, a double 12 safety executed with the kind of commitment and amplitude that draws genuine attention in a final of this quality. The score reflected it.
Urness came into these Games fresh off podium finishes in the first three World Cup events she entered back in November and December. That early-season form wasn't a fluke, and big air in Livigno proved it. A sixth place Olympic finish in your debut season, against a field of this calibre, is a declaration of intent.
She's 21. She just competed in her first Olympics. The trajectory from here is steep in the best possible way.
China's Liu Mengting made her presence felt right when the final needed a jolt of energy. Coming into run three with the podium still up for grabs, she launched an otherway double 14 that changed the atmosphere in the venue entirely. The rotation was slightly under and the score came back lower than the trick deserved, but the audacity of the attempt in that moment told you everything about where Liu's head is at.
Across both slopestyle and big air at these Games, the 22-year-old has shown a willingness to go bigger and bolder than the scoreboard sometimes rewards her for. That gap between ambition and result tends to close quickly in this sport. For her first Olympic Games, the level she brought to Livigno across two disciplines is a significant marker of what's to come.
Double 14s were being launched. Switch double 12s were being stomped. Kirsty Muir put down a double 16 in run two that had the crowd losing their minds, only to crash on her final attempt and finish agonisingly fourth — for the second major competition running. Italy's 18-year-old Flora Tabanelli landed the highest single-run score of the night on a torn ACL and claimed bronze to trigger a home crowd eruption. Canada's Megan Oldham, carrying a quad hematoma from a crash in the slopestyle final earlier in the week, posted 91.75 in run one and never relinquished the lead.
Just 2.50 points separated the top three finishers. On a night where two of the pre-event favourites didn't start, the athletes who did step up produced some of the highest-quality freestyle skiing these Games had seen.
Gu's silvers in both slopestyle and big air. Urness adds back-to-back top-ten Olympic finishes across both disciplines in her first appearance on the Olympic stage. Liu Mengting delivered a confident Olympic debut in slopestyle. Things are far from over; we look ahead to the Men’s Final tonight, Tuesday 17th Feb, and the Half Pipe events which will take place across the closing weekend of the Games.
A record has been broken. History has been written. And across a blizzard-hit evening in Livigno that almost threatened to end things before they started, the standard for women's freestyle skiing was raised higher still.
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