Eileen Gu may compete for China, but the only entity she truly represents is Eileen Gu, Inc.
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LIVIGNO, Italy — Eileen Gu is probably going to win another medal Monday in the women’s freeski big air final. And she’s probably going to come to the press conference, as she always does, and sidestep any questions about the true nature of her citizenship, the political implications of her choice as a 15-year old to represent China — not her native born United States — at the Olympics and the various human rights atrocities perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party.
And then, 5,000 miles away back in the U.S., the rage will begin — directed both at Gu for disloyalty to the country where she was born and even toward those here to document her achievements because we aren’t spending our time pursuing a dozen dead ends about the Uyghurs, Taiwan and the conviction of Jimmy Lai in social media’s thirst to create a viral gotcha moment that will put Gu on her heels and expose her for the fraud some think she is.
Eileen Gu, now 22 and an international relations major at Stanford, is many things. She’s an opportunist. She is outwardly ambitious in ways that make you wonder how deep her inner cynicism runs. She presents her complicated life story through the lens of a saccharin-coated world that does not exist and becomes evasive the moment anything controversial is brought into her orbit. She can talk a lot without saying very much.
She is all those things and probably much more.
But she is not dumb, and she is never undisciplined enough to get on the wrong side of a government that has made her very, very rich.
So to the extent that she has committed her life to being a rank opportunist, perhaps it really doesn’t matter what country she represents when she puts on skis because her ability to play the system for everything it’s worth is as American as apple pie.
The answers that many of you seem to want? Sorry, but they’re not coming — certainly not in a press conference room in the Italian Alps after jumping off a 15-story ramp. They’ll probably never come.
Did she cut a deal with the CCP to keep her American passport, in defiance of Chinese law that does not allow for dual citizenship?
Did the $6.6 million she and another American-born athlete earned from the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau last year — an amount that was accidentally disclosed on a fiscal report before it was scrubbed from the Internet, according to the Wall Street Journal — come with unsavory strings attached?
Does she really believe that inspiring Chinese women to participate in winter sports will make women’s lives better under a regime that is embarrassingly far behind most of the modern world in terms of political representation, economic opportunity and rights for domestic abuse victims?
She’s been asked about all these things, many times over many years in many different venues. And as good as she is on the slopes, she’s even better at Never Going There.
As she told Sean Gregory of Time Magazine in a deeply-reported feature before the Milan Cortina Games, when asked how she’d respond to a question about Donald Trump putting tariffs on China: “I would just say, ‘I didn’t know I got promoted to trade minister.’ It’s irresponsible to ask me to be the mouthpiece for any agenda.”
So we all have to make a choice when it comes to Eileen Gu.
Do we want to drive ourselves to the brink of insanity with some frothing-at-the-mouth screed about wearing the flag of an oppressive regime, or do we accept her for what she is: A really good skier who has no real bearing on anything that truly matters in either in China or the United States and found a way to leverage her talent, her looks and her perfect Mandarin to become a much bigger deal than any other athlete at the Winter Olympics.
In a small defense of Gu, it is worth remembering that she made to choice to compete for China when she was 15.
What do you think she knew at 15, born to a Chinese mother who raised her as a single parent? At that age, I doubt she expected it to be anything more than a business decision — and one that, while undeniably complicated and perhaps morally problematic, has proven to be the correct one for her bank account and the list of sponsors who want to be in the Eileen Gu business.
Did she have reason to think it would turn into this? Did we? People change nationalities all the time in sports — in both directions. She did it before the brutal crackdowns in Hong Kong, before most people understood the scope of atrocities being committed against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, before COVID. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but the context of the choice then is not the context of the choice now.
And since becoming an international superstar and four-time Olympic medalist — with perhaps two more to come here in Livigno — it is not as if Gu spends her social capital extolling the virtues of the CCP’s censorship regime and economic system. She talks about bridging divides and inspiring young people with her athletic achievements. She very clearly wants no part of the culture war others try to drag her into.
It might be cynical as hell, but don’t a lot fans want athletes to stick to sports?
Here’s the truth: Gu may wear the Five-star Red Flag on her ski suit, but the only entity she truly represents is Eileen Gu, Inc. To present her as anything more than that to fuel American political outrage on social media represents something almost as obnoxious as she is.
