Chinese skier Gu Ailing competes during a qualification run of the women's freeski halfpipe event at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Leysin, Switzerland on January 20, 2020. Photo: IC

With about one year to go before the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Chinese skier Gu Ailing claimed two gold medals and a bronze last week at the Winter X-Games held in the US, thrilling China's winter sports fans.

The 17-year-old naturalized Chinese citizen, also known by her English name Eileen Gu, took center stage at the event by bagging slopestyle and halfpipe golds after a bronze medal finish in the big air race.

"Winning slopestyle was an unreal experience, and being the first female rookie to ever win three medals at X-Games capped off the best two days of my life," the skier said on Instagram after finishing the race. 

Sports newspaper Titan Sports ran a front-page story on Gu, with the headline hailing the prodigy as an "X factor" for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The story, praising Gu's performance at the X-Games, also noted that there are several other young elite women's skiing athletes that could overshadow Gu.

The annual games, held on ­Aspen's Buttermilk Mountain in Colorado since 2002, is a competition that brings in top-tier winter sports athletes from around the world.

The news of Gu's achievement at the X-Games had earned 23 million views on China's Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo as of Sunday afternoon, with some bragging that she could carry the flag for Chinese skiing around the world. 

"She postponed her admittance to Stanford University to compete at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games for China. I'm so proud that we can have a devoted skier like Gu," a ­Chinese netizen posted on Sina ­Weibo, hailing Gu as a medal prospect for China at the Winter ­Olympic Games in 2022. 

Speaking fluent Chinese, Gu told media that she has decided to postpone admittance to the ­prestigious university to focus on her preparation for the Beijing Winter Olympics.

"I don't ski just for the Olympics," Gu said in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency on Sunday. "I ski because I love it, and through that process I go to compete and win."

Before her solid performance in the slopestyle ­competition, Gu, who was born in California to a US father and a Chinese ­mother and was naturalized in 2019, became the first rookie to ever win the X-Games halfpipe and is the first ­person of Chinese ­descent to ever win in the X-Games.

Gu started skiing when she was 3 years old and had been competing for the US in international events since the 2017-18 season before her naturalization.

Gu competed for China at the 2020 Lausanne Winter Youth Olympics, where she ended with two golds and one silver. 

Compared to China's strong medal haul in skating events, China's squad depth for skiing events at Winter Olympics ­remain humble. 

Freestyle skier Han Xiaopeng remains the only Chinese skiing athlete to have won a gold medal at a Winter Olympics.

China has vowed to have 300 million people become familiar with winter sports by 2022, when Beijing will become the first city in the world to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics.