Time & Perspective Quote by Eileen Gu

Gu’s line flips the usual athlete script: instead of treating fear as an obstacle to conquer, she treats it as something you can fall for. Calling herself a “hopeless romantic” about fear is a sly contradiction, taking a phrase reserved for love and applying it to the one emotion elite competitors are supposed to outgrow. That tension is the point. It admits that experience doesn’t erase fear; it just changes your relationship to it.

The phrasing “no matter how much time passes” sounds like the promise athletes make to themselves after injuries, pressure, or public scrutiny: one day it’ll feel easier. Gu undercuts that fantasy. Fear, for her, isn’t a temporary phase on the way to confidence; it’s a recurring companion. The romantic framing makes fear oddly intimate, even meaningful. Romance implies longing, risk, and a willingness to be destabilized - which maps neatly onto high-level sport, especially action sports where consequence is physical and instant. She’s not glamorizing panic; she’s reclaiming the sensation as proof she’s still reaching for something that scares her.

There’s also a cultural context here: the polished, brand-safe “mental toughness” talk that dominates sports media. Gu’s quote reads like a corrective to that performative invulnerability. It offers a more sustainable form of bravery: not fearlessness, but consent. Fear stays; she stays too. In a world that rewards athletes for seeming unshakeable, she makes vulnerability sound like a choice - and, more importantly, a kind of appetite.