IWC CMO Franziska Gsell talks to freestyle skier, model and IWC ambassador Eileen Gu

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[Music] free skiing i mean that's an extreme sport can you tell us a bit what it is because

i think not everyone around the globe really knows what that discipline really is so free skiing is you're on skis and the skis look a little bit different

from race skis or your typical rental skis because they are twin tips so the front goes up and the back also goes up so that allows you to ski switch or backwards

and you'll need to ski backwards because the whole discipline surrounds it's pretty much like gymnastics on skis you're doing flips you're doing spins

there's a half pipe which is shaped like this and you jump out and back in and then there's another discipline called slope style which is jumps and rails and then finally the last discipline is

called big air which is just one big jump and in terms of skiing what makes it different from anything else is that it is very expressive it's very creative in

terms of gymnastics right it's beautiful it's so difficult but at the same time there are set difficulties for different tricks whereas in skiing there is no

score based on only difficulty it's scored on difficulty amplitude execution um variety and style so if you do it differently than anybody else it'll score higher even if you're

doing the same trick and everybody will do that trick differently and so in that way it makes it really interesting because it allows for a lot of freedom and creativity and self-expression

and it allows you to kind of personalize your own skiing i always like to say that if everybody was wearing black and everybody was doing the same trick and i was watching from a far distance i would be able to tell who is who because you

can really show your own your own style and influence into skiing so that's what i love so much about it you achieved your first world cup

victory in italy in 2019 when you were only 15. what has happened since then

only 15. what has happened since then wow um a lot has happened since then i would say i think what's really fun is because

things have happened so fast i definitely still have the kind of underdog mentality in the sense that i now have enough confidence to enter any competition and have the intention to

win but also not really the age or the time experience to really expect it so what that means is i feel like i'm it's created a really healthy mindset for me

competitively i have won x games i've won world championships i've made history as the first person of chinese descent to ever win x games i'm the first female rookie to ever win

three medals at x games i'm the first female rookie to win a ski half pipe one of my biggest goals in skiing has always been to inspire young girls especially

young asian american girls or young girls who don't really see representation in our sport yet and so that is really exciting to me because i've always had that as a goal but being able to see those records being broken

and see myself taking those steps towards it is kind of a mind-bending moment for me so it's happened really fast but i'm really grateful for all the people who've been

around me my sponsors iwc my family my mom my coaches who've supported me the whole time right sometimes you feel like as a young person you feel like oh i have to wait

until i'm older before i can really make change or before i can really do things that are important and impactful to the world but really i think it's important to be a young person and to show that

age doesn't dictate capability and that experience teaches more than anything else and so yeah i think that is my biggest goal and

it's something that i wish i had more of growing up but also i'm really grateful because i grew up in a very healthy and supportive environment with my mom and my grandma who are both incredibly

empowered women and who served as the role models that i didn't really see on tv or in this sport or other extreme sports for that matter so i wanted to be

kind of the one to introduce skiing to people to show people the joy of it and so that when people think of free skiing they don't think of a

older white man they think of a young worldly biracial girl who is bubbly and likes to do a bunch of different things and has this genuine

passion for the sport and that was probably my biggest goal and now you know looking in china it absolutely has paid off i see before there were nobody at the ski resorts i knew everybody who free skied in china

because there were only a handful of them there were probably 20 or 30 people in the whole country who knew about it and who were really doing the sport and now you know i could never count i show up to a resort and there are just lines everywhere and people are with

their families and their friends and everyone's having a great time and so it's really exploding so i'm really glad to have even made a small impact in that you often say that your

asian american background has shaped your character could you describe that a bit what it really taught you i think that growing up between two

different cultures helped me a lot with diversity and with understanding and learning in the sense that i was very aware of the similarities and

differences of culture from a very young age so by the age of three i was fully bilingual and i was noticing the little

differences in the kinds of food but also in the way that people interacted over dinner or hot water versus cold water right the age-old debate and so um growing up in that environment i

think has allowed me to then become more receptive of even more cultures as i grow older so now coming to europe more often or traveling to different cities

with kind of different traditions in their own geographical locations has it's made me more receptive to that and made me appreciate it more i think so it's

something that has allowed me to accept differences more easily and something that has allowed me to celebrate cross-cultural friendship more easily and so those are both things that i

continue to try to promote but this empowering women mean to you i grew up in a

all-girls k-8 school and i loved my experience there so much when i started free skiing i was the only girl on my team and it was such a incredibly harsh

culture shock and dichotomy when from monday through friday i would be with all girls and on saturday and sunday when i went skiing i would be the only girl and so in that sense i became hyper

aware of my gender and my expression because i felt like in the beginning all of a sudden everybody around me was male and when i looked at the great idols of skiing all of them were male 2

and so kind of feeling should i be ashamed of my femininity should i try to be more like the boy should i dress like them should i talk like them and would that make me more accepted would that make me better at

skiing with that you know these kind of questions went through my mind at a very young age and i'm really grateful that i had that super strong and empowering educational environment um during the

weekdays because i think that it could have been pretty detrimental to my kind of esteem as a female if i hadn't had that

foundational support but i did and so instead of kind of crushing it down i learned to to celebrate differences right and to to

kind of communicate and make friends and use skiing as a way to create bonds and to create friendship and so that was a big learning opportunity for me and it was also a way for me to

kind of embrace being a woman and to embrace the innate power that we have as in individuals and so yeah it has always been really important to me in seventh grade i gave

my first speech on women in sports it later got used as a voiceover for an international brand for their international women's day commercial and

since then you know in high school i've led workshops for women in sports i've led discussions and workshops about female athletes and their portrayal in the media and that how that affects

people's perception of female athletes i think that these are all really important questions that now more than ever we should be asking ourselves and questions about inclusion and diversity should always be involved in that

conversation as well we know that social media is really influencing informing um the opinions of many people so um where do you see the

benefit of social media social media is a double-edged sword right because i think that especially in my generation everybody

has social media everybody uses it as their primary source of information it's the way that you consciously or subconsciously

view what is trendy or what is cool or how to live your life or kind of what goals to set and so that last piece i think can be extremely beautiful and

extremely inspiring or it can be extremely detrimental depending on which side you end up on um and so in terms of the extremely beautiful side it shows you what's possible right like

through skiing a lot so many people had never heard of skiing before and maybe they are scrolling on their discover page or whatever and then they see a video of me ski and they're like wow this looks great this looks fun this looks cool i want to try this boom maybe

that changed their life it would have changed mine for sure and so i think that there's that side or they see someone doing something who they didn't think was possible and suddenly they feel inspired and they think huh if she

can do it maybe i can try it too or maybe i can enjoy that too she looks like she's having fun why don't i give it a shot right that's the best thing life is all about joy right so that you can find all these different ways to

find joy through social media it expands your perspective and it shows you what's possible on the other hand there's the toxic hurtful beauty standards that can

impact young women and men everywhere by seeing unrealistic beauty expectations or um kind of lifestyles and unrealistic portrayals of joy that

they think maybe if i looked a certain way or had a different amount of money or lived in a different place or had a different job or were born into a different setting then maybe i would be

happy but i think what social media can really obscure are the beautiful imperfections of reality so it's it's a double-edged sword and so in that sense i always try to make my social media as

authentic as possible um every few months i'll do like a question and answer thing to to kind of show the more real sides of myself because on one hand i'm not gonna post hey guys today i had

a bad day period and that's it like today i fell and it hurt and i didn't feel too great like i'm probably not gonna post that but i do want to kind of show that occasionally and so i do want

to make an effort to converse with people and really say you know i'm not perfect all the time and that's what makes everything fun because if you were perfect all the time then you would adapt to that and that would be your normal and then you wouldn't feel

perfect anymore and so in that sense you got to have both sides and social media is a great way to spread information about both i couldn't agree more but there is this

other part you know when you are criticized how do you how do you work on this how do we act on this you know when you when you have critical feedback when i first started getting

hate i used to search for it um i think that it's so much easier to hold on to negativity than positivity um and i really love psychology so i've read a lot of stuff about this and

how kind of as animals the animal brain goes like oh my god there's danger it's more beneficial to remember where the danger is because you want to avoid being hunted if you can remember where the

super sweet tasting berries were hidden in the forest that's great bonus points but like you'd rather remember where the predator's cave is right and so it's a lot easier to remember the negative

parts and that really is embedded into you because you could have a thousand really positive messages and maybe ten negative comments but you will remember the ten negative comments and you will hold on to it and ingrain it into

yourself and repeat that to yourself and so it's really easy to get into that cycle when i first started getting hate i definitely was looped into that cycle um but you know now i really think that i

don't really pay it too much mind because at the end of the day it's my life like i'm in control of my life right if you don't like what i'm doing you don't have my life like oh you don't

like my new trick then don't do it like great you know that's good for you everybody's entitled to their opinion but i'm entitled to not listen as well and so um it's it's kind of

the sense of i can do my thing and you can like it or you don't have to my goal is to spread positivity if your goal is to spread negativity do that it's your prerogative but i'm

not going to have any part in it so that's kind of my philosophy now and now we we talk a bit about the shared values we just welcomed you as a member of that received family which value values do

you think that we we share that you share with our brand there are several values that i share with iwc one of them um is truly being a world citizen like

we mentioned before it's you know iwc is literally international launch companies so it's you know it's international it's got different people from all over the

world i think it was 55 countries um you have employees from and so there are so many different perspectives and cultures and ideas that are going into the design

the creation and the production of all of these gorgeous watches and so there is that aspect which i really love another is sustainability which is really important to me especially as a

winter sports athlete right with global warming our sport is the first one to see the changes and rs4 is the first one to go even now over the years we can really notice it maybe over the summer or in the fall we

used to go to a few locations and we'd be able to ski for months and now we can only ski shorter and shorter every year suddenly it was over a hundred degrees fahrenheit at a glacier when everybody was supposed to be skiing and instead

people couldn't even leave their houses because there was a heat wave and so things like that are really impacting the sport so being able to hear about iwc's initiative i was just chatting to someone about it

about there was like a 95 paper like compacted paper watch band that iwc is working on and so it looks chic you

look at it and it's gorgeous and the design is spectacular but also you know that it is sustainably made and that it is something that is made to be carried

through generations and that itself is really environmentally friendly it's very beautiful what you say about the way we work and the sustainability topic as well um as you just mentioned

it i mean our watches are built to last for generations so everything that go into the watch on the entire way from the sketchbook to the wrist

needs to be most responsibly done and talking about youth generation now and talking about your thoughts what do you think you know uh is now you change yourself would you change now to

to to actually go into a better a better direction for for us and our planet someone once told me that we don't need one person to do everything perfectly

for the planet we need everybody to do everything imperfectly but at least try right we don't need one person to hit 100 we need everybody to hit 70

and that is how impact is made so maybe you know it's one day i drank from one plastic bottle i feel not the best i should have brought my own bottle but

you know it's not that one bottle that is destroying the planet it's kind of everybody's combined like ignoring that kind of aspect if

everybody cared more you know then the difference would be made in that sense so it comes differently for different kinds of people depending on people's lifestyles you know choosing different modes of

transportation if possible or eating a little bit differently if possible or you know buying avoiding fast fashion or buying sustainably made products and

it's it looks different for different kinds of people and that is what's important about it right it's different approaches so that's kind of my perspective especially for young people because it's our planet to be inherited ultimately

and as planet change is exponentially growing then the impact is very urgent it's very urgent for us to make change in our generation before

things get out of hand even more i agree and i mean we have a lot of possibilities to to for a choice right i mean we can choose as you just described it and these are

the little things as well which matter a lot and to think before we act and there is another topic which i would have never guessed you know that you are a big fan of the blue angels

of the us navy flight demonstration squadron how come yeah i mean growing up in san francisco the blue angels will perform every year and i remember when i was

gosh i was probably in second grade um and they came to our school to talk to us and i remember i came home so excited i was telling my mom about the different formations they flew in and the number

of people they had and the people who i'd met and so the next year i was pointing them out to my mom and my grandma and i was telling them all about it and it was it was really exciting for me and now you know we watch them every

year from our balcony because we see them we're live like right under where where they are so it's really a spectacular sight to see and also you know i'm a little bit biased

because i am an adrenaline addict so given the nature of my sport and also the nature of flying upside down in a plane like it definitely goes together um maybe at

some point you know it would be a dream to go and get uh go on one of the planes myself but it is spectacular to watch and therefore it's always very

interesting to talk about time in your discipline as a free skier time might not be the most important element as you just described it but what does time

mean to you i actually have always been really fascinated by time that was actually one of the first entries in my journal and i write about it quite frequently and i

think that ever since i was little i've always been very aware of the passage of time which i know is an odd topic for an eight or nine year old to be talking about but i would often bring it up with

my mother and she feel like are you okay like is like something like why is this what you're thinking about why are you not thinking about like toys or something like why are you talking to me about like inevitable

positive time you're a child but i always thought it was so fascinating right because it's the one constant it should be the one constant and yet it doesn't feel like that because you know

when you're little one year feels like so much and right now especially as i'm growing older and i'm going through my teenage years i'm growing into myself and becoming more self-aware during my

adolescence i think that i'm hyper aware of all the changes that are occurring in my own life and the relationship of time to those changes so

i think that it's really such a fascinating thing and you know the whole time flies when you're having fun sort of sort of thing and growing up as a runner and also a skier i used to think

about this all the time because if i'm running for an hour it feels like a pretty long time if i haven't been training but when i start training again and i become i get into better shape suddenly i feel like wow like it's a

breeze an hour it feels so nice and then when i'm skiing it feels like a blink of an eye like i don't even know i do like a few tricks i'm talking to my friends and suddenly an hour's gone and so really um being able to

to keep an eye on it i think is something that i'm very fascinated in and that's why it's really exciting to be partnering with iwc [Music]