Chinese freeskier Gu Ailing's three Olympics medals will help boost the sport, her fellow skiers were adamant on Friday, as Gu insisted her stunning performances at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics were down to "99 percent hard work" not just talent.

Read more: Gu claims gold in women's freeski halfpipe at Beijing 2022

"Eileen is a machine!," Canada's Cassie Sharpe told reporters, using Gu's English name, after finishing second in the women's freestyle skiing halfpipe on Friday. 

"She's competing in three disciplines, podiumed in all three of them. She's 18, which is psychotic! So I feel she's got so much room to grow and push the sport and continue to improve every single discipline that she's in."

"She's already landing crazy tricks that nobody else is doing. I think if she continues on this (trajectory) that she's on, she can change the face of the sport," Sharpe, who was Olympic halfpipe champion in 2018, added.

Fellow Canadian Rachael Karker, who landed on the third step of the podium in the halfpipe, also raved about the 18-year-old Chinese superstar.

"She did amazing. I am super proud of her, the fact that she's still going after so long (at Beijing 2022) is incredible. 

Gu is "an amazing person to compete with and share the podium with," Karker said.

"She's definitely one of the top girls of our sport and she pushes all of us to be better. I'm super happy to have her in the sport with us."

Read more: China's Gu Ailing wins women's freeski slopestyle silver at Beijing 2022

Gu won gold in big air and halfpipe, as well as silver in slopestyle at the Beijing Olympics. This mirrored her results at the Youth Olympics in 2020, and she went on to win two more gold medals in slopestyle and halfpipe and a bronze medal in big air at world championships last year.

Asked about her status as a freestyle skiing prodigy, Gu said on Friday: "I don't know if I'm talented or not. I think talent is only a very small part of everything, it's not even important."

"It will maybe help you in the first year when you're learning to ski ... but to be able to land such difficult tricks, it takes more than 99 percent of hardwork," she said of her medal-winning performances.

"I'm always the first to come to the training facility and the last to leave.”

"That's also why I'm so happy I won these medals because I know how hard I worked ... so talent is not that important because 99 percent is hard work."

Freestyle skiing is a relatively recent addition to the Winter Olympics and new events keep getting included in the program. Halfpipe and slopestyle made their debut in 2014, and big air was added this year.

With performances like Gu's capturing the imagination of winter sports fans worldwide, the hope now is that freestyle skiing will get more visibility and that the sport will grow further.

"To be able to get these medals is really big for us in Canada for our funding and to help younger generations... so that they can grow to be really amazing skiers. The more attention and the better we do, we'll just keep growing the sport. And hopefully it will just be getting bigger, we'll keep getting better," noted Karker.

"(To) have Eileen in the sport as well, it gets so much more viewership," said Sharpe.

This "hopefully will allow for ... more accessibility for more athletes to get into the sport," including by encouraging resorts to build Olympic-level halfpipes, she hoped.

Gu made history by becoming the first athlete ever to win medals in three different freestyle skiing events at the Winter Olympics, and she hoped this would inspire young girls to follow in her ski tracks.

"It's all about representation," she said. "Extreme sports, we all know, are heavily dominated by men and stereotypically it has not had the kind of representation and sporting equity that it should."

"So ... it is super important to be able to reach those milestones and to be able to push boundaries, not only my own boundaries but those of the sport and those of the record books because that paves the path for the next generation of girls, for the girls at home looking on TV and seeing someone who looks like them and that's the first time they hear about free skiing."

"If you see yourself in sport, it totally changes your perception of what you can do in it," said Gu, noting that she wanted to "break ... the boxes that people get put in."

"It's a huge honor to be able to be the first freeskier to reach the podium in three events as a woman. And it makes me very hopeful about what the next generation can accomplish.”

(Reporting from Zhangjiakou)