Eileen Gu says shes disappointed she cant get help with her packed Olympics schedule

After Eileen Gu secured her spot in the Winter Olympics big air final Saturday, she said she was disappointed that Games organizers wouldn’t make accommodations to allow her the same amount of training as the rest of the skiers in her third and final event, the halfpipe.Gu, who won silver in slopestyle earlier in the week, is the only female freeskier signed up for all three disciplines — slopestyle, halfpipe and big air.The big air final Monday overlaps with the first of three, three-hour halfpipe training sessions for that event scheduled later next week.The 22-year-old Gu, one of the biggest names at the Milan Cortina Games, told reporters she reached out to organizers at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), which sets the schedule.She said she wasn’t asking for special treatment, just the same amount of practice as everyone else was getting, and she even looked for compromises, like joining the snowboarders’ training on the halfpipe.

FIS told her it couldn’t make a change for one athlete because it wouldn’t be fair to the rest.“I’m disappointed in FIS,” Gu said.“I think the Olympics should epitomize aspiration, and I think being able to do something that’s beyond the ordinary should be celebrated instead of punished.”FIS scheduled three training sessions before qualifying, compared to two for a typical World Cup event.

Spokesman Bruno Sassi said “every effort has been made to facilitate the best possible training” for the athletes.“But as we have already seen at these Games, for athletes who choose to compete in multiple disciplines and/or multiple events, conflicts can sometimes be inevitable,” he said.Earlier in the Olympics, Ester Ledecka had to choose between defending her snowboard title and entering her favorite skiing event, the downhill, some five hours away in Cortina d’Ampezzo.She picked snowboarding (where she finished fifth) and instead skied in the super-G (where she crashed and did not f...