Skier Eileen Gu wears a personalized ski suit full of details at the Milan Cortina Olympic Games

When he’s not risking his neck performing stunts on skis, Eileen Gu She loves strutting down catwalks and posing for magazine covers as a model.

So it was no surprise that he wore the latest ski suit at the Winter Olympics.

Gu qualified for the women’s slopestyle final on Saturday wearing an outfit full of details inspired by her Chinese heritage and personal quirks.

Gu, 22, took the opportunity to talk about his suit after leaving the field.

“My God, I’ve been waiting for this moment, adjustment control!” he said before launching into breaking down his outfit.

Gu, born in the United States, competes for China, where her mother is from. She said she and a Stanford classmate designed her suit to honor that family background while also nodding to the 2022 Beijing Games, where Gu became a global freeskiing star when she won two gold medals and a silver medal.

The suit’s off-white base color, made by its Chinese sportswear sponsor Anta, mimics Chinese pottery, also called “China,” creating a backdrop for the blue graphics and pale gold highlights.

A Chinese-style dragon appears on the sleeve beneath another dragon patch, looking fierce and a logo with its name in bold letters. His name also appears in graffiti-like scribbled letters under a flap near his neck. That one is covered by a bib that, being white, doesn’t ruin the look, he said.

“Of course, I had to incorporate the dragon element, which was also relevant in the last Olympic Games,” he said. “It gave me strength, it gave me courage, it served me well, so I wanted to keep that.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more personalized suit, one that includes a thermometer that changes color based on temperature.

“I was obsessed with mood rings when I was little,” she said. “Like, you know, you put them on and they change color with the temperature. So it’s a color-changing thermometer.”

There is also a small compass which Gu said was to satisfy his intellectual side. (After all, he got into Stanford a year early after passing the SAT.)

“I just wanted a little modular thing to get my little nerdy brain going. But in case you get lost, I can tell you which way is north,” he said.

But in the end, it all came back to the sport in which he excels.

Pointing to another spot on his suit, Gu said, “I have clouds down here to represent the feeling of flying, which I like so much about freeskiing.”

Gu overcame a poor start by putting together a strong second run to qualify for the women’s slopestyle final on Saturday. The pressure was on the reigning silver medalist after she fell from the first rail of the first race. But Gu responded by scoring a great goal on his second chance to finish just behind his main rival.

Slopestyle is a course of rails and jumps that skiers navigate while performing acrobatic jumps that judges score based on their execution and difficulty. The freeski and snowboard events of these Olympic Games take place in Livigno, located in the Italian Alps, hours from the official host cities of Milan and Cortina.

The top 12 skiers advanced to the finals. Among them was the British Kirsty Muir with the third best score, just ahead of the American Avery Krumme. The Italian Maria Gasslitter completed the list of qualified skiers to give extra joy to the local fans.

Qualifying for the men’s freeski slopestyle will take place later on Saturday.