Two of the top halfpipe freeskiers in the world are Stanford students.

Eileen Gu ’26, the reigning Olympic champion in the event, successfully defended her title on Sunday morning in Livigno, Italy, earning gold over fellow Chinese teammate Li Fanghui. Zoe Atkin ’26, the reigning world champion, took bronze. 

Gu’s gold medal further cements her status as the most decorated freeskier in history, having earned medals across all six Olympic events she has competed in to date. She also took silver in both slopestyle and big air in Livigno, which limited her halfpipe training — a situation she criticized the International Ski and Snowboard Federation for in an Instagram post last week.

With her bronze, Atkin becomes just the second Team GB athlete to medal in an Olympic skiing event, following after her sister, Izzy Atkin, who won a slopestyle bronze in PyeongChang eight years ago. 

After leading halfpipe qualifiers, Atkin opened Sunday’s final — held after a 15-hour delay due to heavy snow — with a conservative 90.50 run that put her on top of the standings. Gu stumbled and abandoned her opening attempt, turning up the pressure for her following runs.

The roles flipped on the second run: Gu responded with a 94.50 to take the lead and Atkin clipped the deck to crash on her fourth trick. Gu went on to improve her score to 94.75 on her final run.

Then it all came down to Atkin, who needed better than a 93.00 to displace Fanghui for silver or 94.75 to displace Gu for gold in the final run of the day. Even with the highest amplitude out of the pipe of any skier, Atkin fell short of silver by 0.5 with a score of 92.50. The bronze marked a significant improvement from her ninth-place finish in her Olympic debut at the 2022 Beijing Games.

From Stanford to the ski slopes of the Italian Alps, Gu and Atkin capped off an Olympics that saw four Cardinal compete and win four medals.