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. But the interesting thing is, it’s not at all correlated to results,” Gu said in a June 2025 episode of The Burnouts podcast hosted by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni. “That’s what’s kind of surprising to people, is like, you can win the Olympics and still just enter the deepest rut of your life and just really be questioning everything, your purpose.”
“[You] feel so burnt out, but at the same time just have all this anxiety and pent up energy, not sure where to direct it,” she continued. “And I was no exception.”
At 22-years-old, Gu’s accomplishments have already mounted. Aside from being the youngest Olympic champion in freestyle skiing, Gu also attends Stanford University, having scored a 1580 on her SAT. Her modeling has led her to become a founding member of Victoria’s Secret’s VS Collective helping to reshape the brand’s image, and she was recently featured on the cover of Time magazine. The Chinese-American athlete earns $23 million per year, but only a fraction of it comes from her illustrious skiing career. She has had endorsement deals with Porsche, Red Bull, and IWC Schaffhausen, as well as Chinese brands like Anta Sports and Luckin Coffee.
