Saturday Scroll: The power of a cross-cultural superstar

The Olympics have a marketing problem: While passion for the Summer Games is a worldwide phenomenon, it’s only accessible to brands every four years. It’s even worse for the Winter Olympics, which has fewer marketing dollars and less media attention, demonstrating that brands often fail to harness the total appeal of winter sports.

Considering those realities, it’s shocking to think that a 22-year-old freestyle skier representing China has steadily remained in the spotlight as one of the world’s highest-paid women athletes. That’s the anomaly of Eileen Gu, who ascended the podium thrice at Beijing 2022 as the breakout star of her first Olympics. Gu won over both Chinese and American audiences, leading to brand deals in both countries — and it wasn’t just because of her gold medals. The Chinese-American Stanford student is also devoted to fashion, and has led campaigns for luxury fashion houses targeting the Chinese market.

While elite luxury brands often recruit athletes for campaigns, what makes Gu unique is that she’s a full-fledged model on IMG’s roster. Mix a supermodel’s skills with the marketing power of women athletes — then sprinkle in headway with one of the world’s top luxury goods markets — and you’ve got the $80M unicorn that is Gu.

For the past four years, Gu has straddled multiple worlds while maintaining her elite sporting status, proving that a compelling athlete story is always relevant — and Olympians have the cultural power to flex their aspirational brands far more frequently than every four years.

Four years ago, Gu showed the world what it means to “ski like a girl” when she won three Olympic medals. Not only was she the sport’s youngest Olympic champion at 18, she was the first athlete to win three freestyle skiing medals at a single Olympics. Boosting China’s medal count in Beijing was the perfect headline, but Gu’s storyline as a national hero was years in the making. She declared her intention to ski for China in 2019, and Chinese brands were ready to seize the moment.

Even before the Games, domestic and international brands recognized how a phenomenal athlete like Gu could translate across Chinese and American audiences with cultural and linguistic fluency. She banked $31.4M in endorsement deals in 2021 alone, including over 20 brands with a Chinese presence such as IWC Schaffhausen, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co. was the first luxury brand to sign Gu, a decision that paid off by the time she topped the podium. When she won gold on February 8th, 2022, Tiffany saw an organic traffic spike overnight. On February 23rd, Tiffany rolled out their new ad campaign starring Gu across Chinese social media, which drew over 20M views in two days. That, plus a collab with fellow Tiffany ambassador Jackson Yee, drove 170M views for the #TiffanyKnot campaign on Weibo within days.

Traditional sports brands benefited too. Chinese sports equipment brand Anta Sports, which began sponsoring Gu in January 2020, saw shares increase 67% between then and February 2022.

Unlike other Olympians whose mentions rise and fall with the Games, Gu has remained in the spotlight thanks to her multiyear partnerships. In 2024, she signed a deal with Porsche, and in 2025, she became the global ambassador for tech company TCL. These new deals, along with existing sponsorships, allowed Gu to rank among the top five highest-paid women athletes each year since 2022.

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Brands can circumvent the IOC’s strict sponsorship rules with direct athlete partnerships, and after 2024’s “Social Media Olympics,” companies worldwide are leaning on athletes and creators to capture the moment. There’s much to gain from stars who can captivate cross-cultural audiences, and there are several winter sport athletes who could follow the blueprint laid out by Gu.

🇭🇺 🇨🇳 Speed skating brothers Shaoang and Shaolin Liu — who grew up in Hungary with a Hungarian mother and a Chinese father — will compete for China in 2026 after winning gold for Hungary in 2018. Together, they have been celebrated in fashion-forward photoshoots for Vogue China and Esquire.

🇦🇺 🇮🇹 Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli has been perfecting his Italian and his halfpipe routine as he returns to his father’s native Italy for Milano Cortina 2026. Like Gu, Guseli is a wunderkind looking to make history across multiple Olympic events, and he’s sponsored by action sports heavyweights Oakley and Red Bull. Team Australia has highlighted Guseli’s Italian connection, yet Italian brands haven’t, missing what could be a powerful storytelling opportunity.

🇯🇲 🇺🇸 Helaina, Henri IV, and Henniyah Rivers are Jamaican-American triplets who dream of skiing for Jamaica in 2030 or 2034. They’re already broadcasting their story on YouTube and Instagram, which showed a recent Team Jamaica photoshoot with activewear brand Spyder.

As always, brands should be watching Olympic hopefuls and sign promising athletes years before they win Olympic glory. Not every athlete will strike gold quite like Eileen Gu, but there is a compelling narrative around every multicultural athlete.