She is an exceptional athlete who has already won medals in the Beijing Olympics. But the deep fascination with Eileen Gu’s (谷愛凌) origin story has threatened to overshadow anything she does on the slopes.
As the freestyle skier chases gold in the mountains northwest of Beijing, some competing narratives about her have taken hold, from California to China.
Some have the San Francisco native skiing for the Chinese team to secure more lucrative endorsements. In others, she has betrayed the US, where she was born and grew up, to ski for China, her mother’s native country.
And a third: She was way too
Mikaela Shiffrin came in 18th on Tuesday. She still has a chance for a medal in the Alpine combined. Eileen Gu, the Chinese freestyle skier, won a silver medal in slopestyle.
The frenzy to “explain” Eileen Gu’s choice reflects biases and misunderstandings in the United States about Asian American identity. The stories about Eileen Gu are as much about the people telling them as they are about the athlete herself.
The frenzy to “explain” Eileen Gu’s choice reflects biases and misunderstandings in the United States about Asian American identity. The stories about Eileen Gu are as much about the people telling them as they are about the athlete herself.