China's Eileen Gu wins gold in freeski halfpipe to make Olympic history

China's freeski sensation Eileen Gu won her second gold of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday, becoming the first freestyle skier to bag three medals at a single Games.

The 18-year-old superstar topped the podium in the halfpipe final at Zhangjiakou's Genting Snow Park, adding to her gold in the big air event last week and silver in slopestyle on Tuesday.

Gu, who says halfpipe is her strongest event, dominated from the start.

Again and again, she sped up the wall of the halfpipe and launched herself skyward, spinning and twisting gracefully to loud cheers from fans in the stands.

Already firmly in the lead, she outdid herself in the second run with an impressive score of 95.25. She was already assured of the gold by the time she set off on a third run victory lap.

Gu gave her coach a big hug at the top of the slope, came down the halfpipe once again and finished the ride with easy jumps, posing and celebrating her victory in midair.

"I've never taken a victory lap before in my entire life, so I felt like, 'You know what, last event at the Olympics it feels like I finally deserve it'. I'm really happy," Gu told reporters after her win, according to the Olympic site.

"It has been two straight weeks of the most intense highs and lows I've ever experienced in my life. It has changed my life forever," she said.

Reflecting on her first and history-making Olympic Games, Gu said her overriding emotion was a "deep-seated sense of gratitude and resolution."

"Just like this all coming together, years and years in the making and it's like letting out a deep breath. I feel exhausted. I mean, God, from opening ceremony until now I've been skiing every single day so I'm really tired, but I feel at peace. I feel grateful. I feel passionate, and I feel proud," she said.

China's Eileen Gu made Winter Olympics history on Friday by winning her third freeski medal.

 

Canada's Cassie Sharpe claimed silver with a best score of 90.75, with her teammate Rachael Karker taking bronze. An emotional Gu embraced both of them as they posed for photos after event.

She also wore a panda hat as she received her Bing Dwen Dwen replica mascot on the podium, causing a stir among her fans on Chinese social media.

A breakout star

The Beijing 2022 Olympics have been a breakthrough moment for Gu as she became one of the biggest stars of the Games.

Born and raised in California, Gu chose in 2019 to compete for China, where she is known as Gu Ailing. In the lead-up to the Games, her popularity skyrocketed, with her face splashed across billboards, commercials, magazine covers and on state television.

And since the Games got underway, she has become a national sensation, earning more than 5 million fans on social media site Weibo.

She was hailed as the "pride of China" after winning her first gold, and has since won more medals than anyone else for Team China at these Games. Following her final victory in the halfpipe, China now boasts eight gold medals -- the same as the United States (although China's total medal count lags behind the US.)

But Gu has played down the national rivalry in the sport.

"One thing I love so much about freeskiing is this camaraderie and this spirit of support in which it's not about what country you're skiing for, it's about our shared passion for the sport and this unique ability for this extreme sport to unite people because we're not here to break limits for a country, we're here to break the human limit," she said.

"It's not about nationality, it's about bringing people together. It's about sharing culture. It's about learning from each other and forging friendships."

Though Gu switched to compete for China, it's unclear whether she renounced her American citizenship -- usually a requirement for Chinese naturalization, since the country does not allow dual citizenship. She has repeatedly dodged questions about her citizenship while highlighting her dual identity, often saying: "When I'm in China, I'm Chinese. When I'm in the US, I'm American."

Reporters press Eileen Gu over her citizenship. See her response

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Teenage Olympic sensation Eileen Gu wins gold. And crashes the Chinese internet

 

Eileen Gu fans temporarily crashed China's leading social media platform on Tuesday, as tens of millions rushed online to celebrate the teenage freeski sensation winning her first gold medal of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

American-born Gu, 18, jumped into the top position at the women's big air competition with her third run, scoring 94.5 with a 1620 and a perfect landing -- making her total score 188.25 in the event's debut at the Winter Olympics.

She narrowly beat out France's Tess Ledeux, who took silver with a score of 187.50. Switzerland's Mathilde Gremaud won the bronze.

"That was the best moment of my life. The happiest moment, day, whatever -- of my life. I just cannot believe what just happened," said Gu after her win, according to the Olympic site.

"Even if I didn't land it, I felt it would send a message out to the world and hopefully encourage more girls to break their own boundaries," she added. "That was my biggest goal going into my last run. I reminded myself to have fun and enjoy the moment and that, no matter what, I was so grateful to even have this opportunity to even be here."

Fans filled the stands to cheer for Gu, who was born and raised in California but decided in 2019 to compete for China. Known as the "snow princess" among her Chinese fans, Gu -- already a reigning world champion -- has become the unofficial face of China's Olympic ambitions, and saw her popularity skyrocket in the lead-up to the Games.

Ledeux, who had been leading the competition until the last run when she overbalanced on the landing, sank to the ground in tears after the final result. Gu and Gremaud both knelt on the snowy floor to console her, pulling Ledeux into a hug and rubbing her back.

Gu's victory sparked joyous scenes online. The topic dominated searches on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo, where seven of the 10 top trending topics were all about Gu's win. Fans on her Weibo, where she has 2.6 million followers, left more than 90,000 comments in less than 30-minutes after her win.

Related hashtags, such as "Gu Ailing won the gold medal," received more than 300 million views within an hour -- eventually crashing the entire Weibo site due to the massive number of users.

Chinese authorities were also unusually quick to congratulate Gu. "We are glad to hear that Gu Ailing, a Beijing athlete, won a precious gold medal for the Chinese sports delegation and honored for the country with her perfect performance in the final of the women's freestyle ski platform at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games," said the Beijing Municipal Government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Beijing Committee, referring to Gu by her Chinese name.

Gu's father is American and her mother is Chinese. She grew up skiing on the slopes of Lake Tahoe, and had reached her first World Cup podium by the age of 15.

Though she switched to compete for China, it's unclear whether she renounced her American citizenship -- usually a requirement for Chinese naturalization, since the country does not allow dual citizenship. Gu has never publicly commented on the status of her American citizenship, though an article on the official Olympic site referred to her "dual nationality" in January.

At a news conference after her win on Tuesday, reporters asked Gu several times if she was still a US citizen. She dodged answering each time, saying only that she felt American in the US and Chinese in China.

Since joining China's national team, Gu's face has been splashed across magazine covers and billboards in the country. She has landed numerous sponsorships and brand deals, and is fast becoming one of China's hottest young stars -- though her newfound success has also come with increased scrutiny from critics in the West.

Apart from her skiing career, she's also a model, brand ambassador, and was accepted into Stanford University, which she plans to attend in the fall.

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Eileen Gu is the poster child for a new type of Chinese athlete. But one wrong move could send her tumbling

 

Meet the skiing sensation who's choosing to represent China instead of the US

At this year's Beijing Winter Olympics, the face of China's sporting dreams is undeniably American.

Freestyle skier Eileen Gu's rise to the top has been meteoric -- and her popularity in China has exploded in the lead-up to the Games. "Snow princess Gu Ailing set to shine at home Olympics," read one headline in state-run media Xinhua, referring to Gu by her Chinese name.

But Gu, 18, has another home: the United States, where she was born to a Chinese mother and American father, and where she first discovered her love for the sport. In 2015, just a few months after she reached her first World Cup podium, the San Francisco native announced she was switching to compete for China instead of the US -- a controversial decision that thrust her firmly into the spotlight.

"This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make," she wrote in an Instagram post at the time. "I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringings."

A delivery worker rides pasts an advertisement showing Eileen Gu, at a bus stop in Beijing on January 11.

 

She has since become a household name in China. Walk down the street and you'll see her face splashed across billboards and magazine covers. Promotional videos ahead of the Olympics show Gu performing tricks midair and running on the Great Wall. She has nearly 2 million followers on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, as well as multiple Chinese sponsors, brand deals, and documentary teams following her every movement.

But behind her success is the heavy pressure of being both Chinese and American at a time of intense geopolitical tensions; of representing her mother's homeland, a country under fire in the West for alleged human rights abuses; and of trying to be an athlete and nothing more during one of the most controversial Olympics in recent history.

She's not the only one walking this tightrope -- the Beijing Olympics feature an unprecedented number of foreign-born athletes competing for China, many hailing from North America. Among them, Gu has become a poster child for an ambitious China, eager to show it has the power to attract foreign talent and mold a new type of Chinese athlete on the world stage.

But these athletes -- especially those of Chinese descent -- face an impossible balancing act as they straddle two countries and navigate the complexities of a dual identity in the public eye.

An impossible position

More than a dozen athletes representing China at the Olympics are foreign-born -- and most are on the men's hockey team, where only six of the 25 members are homegrown nationals.

Switching citizenship for sport is actually quite common internationally -- China is just late to the game, said Susan Brownell, an expert on Chinese sports at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The shift is especially unusual given that China is highly homogenous with some of the world's strictest immigration rules. "China never did things like this before," Brownell added.

There are plenty of Caucasian faces in the mix with no Chinese ethnicity or obvious link to the country, such as former NHL players Jake Chelios and Jeremy Smith. But it's the athletes of Chinese descent who are under the most scrutiny, such as Canadian-born hockey player Brandon Yip and US-born ice skater Zhu Yi, formerly known as Beverly Zhu.

Zhu's disappointing Olympic debut served to illustrate the unique pressures facing these athletes. After she fell flat on the ice and finished last in the women's short program team event Sunday, Chinese social media exploded in scorn and vitriol directed at the 19-year-old skater.

On Weibo, the hashtag "Zhu Yi has fallen" gained 200 million views in just a few hours. Many questioned why Zhu was picked for the team at the expense of a Chinese-born athlete, while others criticized her halting Mandarin. "This is such a disgrace," said a comment with 11,000 upvotes.

Gu and Zhu are mirror images in many ways -- both born in California, only a year apart in age -- but Gu has charmed the public with her fluent Mandarin and familiarity with Chinese culture, and has received little of the Chinese skepticism that dogs Zhu.

Gu advanced to the Big Air finals at her first qualifying competition on Monday, after being introduced by the announcer as a "favorite" and drawing a roar from the excited crowd. But it's unclear whether that adulation will continue if Gu doesn't deliver the gold medals she's tipped to win.

And Gu's fame brings its own challenges. Fox News has labeled her the "ungrateful child of America," a sentiment found frequently under her social media posts, as well as that of hockey players like Chelios.

"Nice to see you take all your USA successes and accomplishments to China and not represent where you were born and raised," a commenter wrote under one of Gu's Instagram posts last week.

Some have accused her of placing profit and prestige above taking a stand on human rights issues, with critics taking particular aim at the high-profile sponsorships she has landed in China. The US is leading a diplomatic boycott of the Games, citing the alleged human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in China's western Xinjiang region -- which Gu has stayed quiet on.

 

athletes to watch in the Beijing Winter Olympics

Through it all, Gu has tried to walk a middle path. She creates social media content in both English and Chinese, posts photos from Shanghai and California, cracks jokes for American audiences on TikTok while starring in Chinese-language documentaries in the mainland.

"When I'm in China, I'm Chinese. When I'm in the US, I'm American," Gu told Olympic Channel at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Winter Olympics.

Just last week, she alluded to this dual identity in a caption on Instagram. "Having been introduced to the sport growing up in the US, I wanted to encourage Chinese skiers the same way my American role models inspired me," she wrote.

But as much as she wants to express both parts of her heritage and stay away from politics, it seems the world won't let her. And China's embrace of Gu also reflects its uncompromising view of nationality, which has become more insular and forceful under Chinese President Xi Jinping: either you're Chinese or you're not.

The citizenship debate

Hanging over Gu -- and many of the foreign-born athletes -- is the question of citizenship.

China does not allow dual citizenship, with the government cracking down in recent years and encouraging the public to report people secretly holding two passports. There are very few exceptions to the ban, and it's highly unlikely any of these exceptional circumstances apply to the athletes in question, said Donald Clarke, a professor at the George Washington University Law School specializing in Chinese law.

"The only way the hockey players could become Chinese citizens is to become naturalized, and under China's nationality law, they need to renounce their foreign citizenship," Clarke told CNN. The same goes for Gu.

Eileen Gu after placing first in the Women's Freeski Halfpipe competition at the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix on January 8, 2022 in Mammoth, California.

 

But it's not clear whether that has been enforced. Gu has never publicly shared whether she renounced her US citizenship to compete for China, and speculation grew after she applied for the US Presidential Scholars Program in 2021, which is only open to US citizens or permanent residents. The official Olympics site appeared to confirm her status in a January article that referred to Gu's "dual nationality."

Both Clarke and Brownell said the more likely scenario is that China bent its own rules to allow foreign-born athletes to keep two passports, hoping to bolster its Olympic medal count -- long touted by the Chinese government as a sign of national strength.

This strategy might be "an experiment by the Chinese leadership, which will judge the public reaction before deciding whether to move forward with the practice on a larger scale and allowing dual citizenship to athletes," Brownell said.

Chinese officials have carefully avoided the question of Gu's nationality, instead emphasizing her Chinese heritage. She is what the government often refers to as "overseas Chinese" -- foreign nationals of Chinese descent, given that label regardless of their citizenship or how many generations of their family have lived abroad.

Since Xi took office, he has repeatedly asserted that overseas Chinese, too, belong to the nation -- and repeatedly pledged to "unite overseas Chinese" with their relatives in China as part of the "Chinese dream."

It seems that Gu is part of that Chinese dream, with the government and its propaganda machine going full steam in claiming her as their own.

"I have very very deep roots in China," Gu told state broadcaster CCTV, according to state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times. She added that she had been in China when it was announced the Winter Games would be held in Beijing, which is when "I started thinking about competing for China."

In one piece, Xinhua noted that Gu visited Beijing every summer growing up, watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics from the stands, and loves Peking duck and dumplings.

Gu "should be an idol for the whole world," a Chinese fan told the Global Times. "It used to be that people wanted to be American, so why not accept that people want to be Chinese now?"

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