She would have been the biggest American star of the Beijing Winter Olympics, if only she hadn’t decided to compete for China. Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old freestyle skier from California, narrowly missed out on her second gold medal of the Games with a huge final run in the slopestyle, but her score of 86.23 fell just short of the 82.56 notched up by Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland. Chewing on a steam bun before rushing off to halfpipe training, Gu told reporters her mother—who was raised in Beijing but emigrated to the U.S. 30 years ago—was finding the Olympics more stressful than she was. “My goal coming into the Olympics was to have one gold and have one more podium in a different event. I’ve already met that goal, and going into my strongest event,” she said.