A single, understated line from a social-media Q&A—“I recently embraced Buddhism”—took on new weight amid Olympic scrutiny and a moment of grief after gold.
In the high-velocity world of elite sport, athletes are often expected to project certainty: confidence, purpose, and a brand-ready answer to every question. That is why a brief, almost offhand remark by freestyle skiing star Eileen Gu has lingered far beyond the halfpipe. As World Religion News noted this week, Gu once responded to a follower’s question about self-doubt not with a slogan, but with a spiritual direction: stepping back from ego and reputation.
A quiet disclosure that cut through the noise
According to reporting cited by WRN, Gu wrote during a May 2022 social-media Q&A: “I recently embraced Buddhism”—adding that she was trying to “let go of the self” and detach from “outside opinion and reputation.” The exchange was reported at the time by Malaysia’s Sin Chew Daily.
Whatever her private practice looks like, the public record is clear on one point: Gu framed Buddhism less as a label and more as a discipline—an effort to loosen the grip of external judgment.
Pressure is part of the job—so are the expectations
That tension between performance and projection has followed Gu for years. During the Beijing 2022 Olympics, she became a global phenomenon while also attracting fierce debate about identity and allegiance. In a widely circulated 2022 interview carried by NBC16, she captured the public’s urge to categorize her in a single sentence: people, she said, sometimes don’t know what to do with someone “when they’re not fitting in a box.”
In early 2026, that pressure returned in a familiar setting: the Winter Olympics. Reuters reported that Gu reached the women’s halfpipe final at the Milano Cortina Games after bouncing back from a qualification fall—describing how she “reinforce[d]” her self-belief when it mattered, with the event unfolding under intense scrutiny.
Gold—then grief and Faith as method
Then came the kind of moment that exposes the limits of any public persona. Reuters reported that Gu won halfpipe gold, becoming the most decorated Olympic freestyle skier—and soon after learned that her grandmother had died. In a tearful press conference, Gu spoke about her grandmother’s influence in language that was vivid and personal, calling her a force who did not simply drift through life.
It is impossible—and unfair—to claim any single belief system explains how a person endures moments like that. But Gu’s earlier Buddhist language about releasing ego and reputation helps explain why her comment resonated: it points to a way of living with contradiction—achievement and loss, applause and pain—without being fully owned by either.
One reason Gu’s remark has endured is that it was not packaged as a “conversion story” or a content strategy. She has not publicly outlined a specific Buddhist tradition, formal affiliation, or detailed practice routine in mainstream reporting. That restraint matters. In many Buddhist cultures, quiet practice is often valued over proclamation—and in a celebrity economy that monetizes identity, not turning faith into a product can read as its own kind of integrity.
Gu’s public interviews also suggest an analytical temperament that prizes preparation and careful thinking over sweeping claims. A January 2026 TIME profile described an athlete who is reflective about the psychological costs of fame and the comedown that can follow Olympic highs—an inner landscape where “letting go” becomes less a slogan than a survival skill.
What we can responsibly say—and what we can’t
Based on the verifiable public record, Gu has said she embraced Buddhism and linked it to detachment from ego and outside opinion. Beyond that, responsible reporting should avoid turning one quote into a full spiritual biography. The larger story is not about declaring what Gu “is,” but about what her words offered to people watching: a reminder that the loudest judgments are not always the truest ones—and that, sometimes, the most radical move in public life is to release the need to be approved.
