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Dan Wetzel
multiple authors
Eileen Gu is a talented college student who works as a cover model and can even pull off a perfect double cork 1620 before landing it safely on the side of the Alps.
She speaks fluent English and fluent Mandarin, scored a 1560 on her SATs, and achieved success in Kappa Kappa Gamma. She’s passionate about quantum physics, still an international studies major at Stanford, though not this year because of the Winter Olympics, where on Monday she won the fifth medal of her career, a silver in freeski big air. She will next compete in the freeski halfpipe final on Saturday.
She’s a sensation in China (where her mother was born) and also a sensation in the United States (where she was born)—but also a cultural touchstone. He has thrown out crores of people from corporations in both countries desperate to join him.
She is 22 years old.
Not one of those lucrative marketing deals is a beer company that can label her the World’s Most Interesting Woman, which is a title even her staunchest critics can accept.
And it certainly has its fiercest critics.
She competes for China — not the United States, where she grew up, lives, and, until the 2018-19 season, was a member of the U.S. ski and snowboard team — which has put her in the middle of a firestorm, at least on social media.
Outrage ranges from those with honest and heartfelt patriotic opinions to elite culture-war profiteers.
The harshest critics have labeled him a traitor, although this seems serious. She did not join any foreign army. She competes in a sport that few Americans know about, except for a few nights every four years on NBC.
To many others, she is a success story, a Gen Z force of nature, empowered in every way, including picking her own team at the Olympics.
To be clear, Gu didn’t break any rules by moving to China at age 15. The choice of nation may be strange, but it is not unusual. Team USA includes a bobsledder who previously competed in three Olympics for Canada as well as an ice dancing team originally born in Ukraine and Canada. In soccer, the United States men’s national team, like most national associations, actively recruits foreign-born dual citizens to play on its team.
The patriotism of critics cannot be defined. It’s a personal, often situational, slippery feeling. This does not mean that it does not exist. Rejection can still sting.
Gu has repeatedly explained that much of her decision to compete for China was based on the opportunity to serve as a role model for young Chinese girls who lack the prevalence of female stars present in the States.
“The United States already has representation,” Gu told TIME last month. “I’d love to build my own pond.”
That’s nice, but it’s no coincidence that the pond he built contains some high-priced, waterfront property, including payments made directly from a Chinese government agency.
In fact, Eileen Gu, first, most importantly, and perhaps exclusively, competes not for a country but for Eileen Gu. Like the athletes who came before him, from Mark Spitz to Michael Phelps to the NBA Dream Team, Gu has exploited the Olympic ideal for profit and power, just as the International Olympic Committee, multinational corporations and politicians around the world have done for generations.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Gu and figure skater Zhu Yi – who is American-born and competing for China, with Zhu reportedly renouncing his US citizenship – have been paid a combined $14 million over the past three years by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau. Then the key is to unlock advertising and sponsorship money by becoming a hero in the massive Chinese market.
Forbes estimates Gu will earn $23.1 million in 2025 alone, the fourth highest among all female athletes globally.
With the combination of her talent, tenacity, and Vogue covers, she certainly wouldn’t be filling out a FAFSA app to cover tuition if she was rocking the red, white, and blue, but that’s a big no. By comparison, Caitlin Clark earned an estimated $12.1 million last year, according to Forbes.
When Gu was 15 and being raised by a single mother in San Francisco, no such thing was assured.
So as selling went, it was profitable.
To focus only on the finger-pointing and flag-waving is to miss the bigger story here, a puzzle wrapped in a mystery over a pair of skis.
Patriotism in exchange for salary is questionable from the very beginning. And Gu, with his ever-present smile, seemingly constant camera awareness and smart-but-intuitive answers, can invite questions of fidelity.
When Gu hoists the Chinese flag after a race, is he proud of the country or the pay?
He has deftly handled questions from both sides of the Pacific about his decision. Some wonder how this is possible, since China does not offer dual citizenship and, to our knowledge, Gu has never renounced his US citizenship. She never appeared in the quarterly IRS publication of “Individuals who have chosen to immigrate.”
There is special anger in America over the fact that it repeatedly avoids saying anything about human rights violations in China. The hypocrisy is real, although a segment of the same critics generally urge American athletes to “stick to the game”, at least when the opinions expressed do not coincide with theirs.
Then again, is that really some kind of help to the Chinese Communist Party? Is it good for them that millions of their youth idolize a highly educated, westernized, cutthroat capitalist businesswoman who urges children not to wait until they grow up to be the change they want to see?
Who knows, maybe it’s an American plant.
Furthermore, is she really hurting the United States if she, a one-man corporation, is draining millions from China only to possibly invest back in the US, where she lives? How does that rank on the patriotism scale compared to a US-based multinational company sponsoring Team USA while offshoring jobs? Many American companies, including ESPN’s parent company Disney, do a lot of business in China.
Like it or not, isn’t that what it means to be an opportunist and play the American way in all directions for more and more money?
Yes, having a citizenry that truly loves America and will never consider any alternative is an ideal for many people. Then, if you were offered $23.1 million to work for a Chinese company…
Gu is intelligent enough to not have an opinion or explanation on all this, and perhaps one day she will offer a full account. Now, she’s left both sides of the Pacific in search of the truth, trying to solve this mystery.
“That’s what I really like about quantum physics,” Gu told Olympics.com.[is] It’s very ideological and makes you question the nature of reality.”
Was she talking about how her studies help push her into more twists and turns athletically, or was she trolling the dueling superpowers whose obsession with sports has brought her generational wealth and global fame?
Eileen Gu appears to be like a funhouse mirror that takes people’s projections and reflects them right back, all while flying higher and higher in the air, looking like a carefree college kid calmly sailing above the field.
Go ahead and name him almost every name in the book. You may also be right.
Just know that with all the money and medal counting, with photo shoots and sorority formals and physics finals, he’s unlikely to call you back.
