As China's Gu Ailing gears up to defend her women's freestyle skiing halfpipe title at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, she carries the weight of high expectations, having picked up two silver medals in her first two events in Italy.

Gu, who clinched two golds and one silver at Beijing 2022, is looking to once again expand her medal tally. But she's not without formidable challengers. The list includes Estonia's Kelly Sildaru, who captured bronze in the women's slopestyle four years ago, and is now focused solely on the halfpipe.

Speaking with CGTN's Dan Williams in Livigno, Sildaru acknowledged the inherent dangers of freestyle skiing.

"I think freestyle skiing is one of the most dangerous sports," she said. "I think you don't need much, like, to crash. It's just like you could get some, I don't know, headwind. There's just, like, something small could go wrong and you could get injured. So it's definitely a really risky sport."

Reflecting on her career, Sildaru recounted the pressure of making her Winter Olympics debut at Beijing 2022.

"I'm from a really small country, Estonia, and I feel like I had so much pressure on me, because everybody was waiting for a medal from me," she recalled. "So yeah, I ended up winning bronze, which is really exciting and I'm really proud of that."

While looking ahead to Thursday's women's halfpipe qualifying session, Sildaru expressed excitement about the strong field she will face, emphasizing that the presence of top athletes enhances the competitive spirit.

"I'm really excited to be here at the Olympics anyways, and I feel like having such a strong field is also amazing, because I feel like it always sucks competing when you're missing some of the athletes," she noted. "So I feel like we have everything here right now, and nobody's injured. I think so that's really, really good."

As for the tremendous international popularity of China's Gu, Sildaru acknowledged its positive impact on women's freestyle skiing.

"Four or five, six years ago, nobody, or not that many people, know what freestyle skiing or watch slope, what's halfpipe," she concluded. "But I think now they know it a bit more, which is really, really good, to have more knowledge of our sport."