Eileen Gu is one of the world’s best freestyle skiers and has a gold medal to prove it. She’s become the face of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, with a huge following in both the United States and China.
But her global success has also come with strong criticism for her choice in 2019 to represent China in national competitions instead of the United States.
“The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born, during the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help to promote the sport I love,” Gu wrote on Instagram.
Her decision has spurred dramatically different responses from American and Chinese social media users. Following her gold medal victory, the Chinese social media platform ‘Weibo’ crashed as users rushed to congratulate her. Meanwhile, several Americans on Twitter called her a ‘traitor’ and ‘sell out’.
But Gu seems to be ignoring the online trolls. Instead, she used a press conference to express her gratitude to both countries.
“I have always been super outspoken in my gratitude to the U.S. and to the U.S. team as well,” Gu said. “They have been nothing but supportive to me and so for that I am forever grateful and same to the Chinese team, they’ve, you know, been so, so supportive of me. And so in that sense I feel like sport is really a way that we can unite people. It’s something that doesn’t have to be related to nationality. It is not something that can be used to divide people. We are all out here, together, pushing the human limit.”
If athletes have multiple citizenships, the International Olympic Committee allows athletes to choose which country they wish to represent. It’s part of Rule 41 in the Olympic Charter. Athletes that change or acquire new nationalities can submit a country change request to the IOC Executive Board for approval ahead of competition.
