On Monday, world champion skier Eileen Gu made her Olympic debut in the women’s big air qualification round. But even before that, Ms Gu – also known as China’s “Snow Princess” – was already known to millions.
A teenage US-born athlete, Ms Gu is indisputably a gifted skier. At 18, she has already won eight international skiing events, claiming gold for the big air event in the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics in Lausanne and medalling three times at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado, last year.
She started her quest for medals at the Beijing Games in spectacular fashion, claiming gold in the ski big air with her third and final jump.
But it is not her podium odds in Beijing that are sparking the most provocative discussions about her.
A San Francisco native who learned to ski on the pristine slopes of California’s Lake Tahoe, she is representing China, not the USA, in the Olympics – a move that has come at a sensitive time for Sino-American relations, and has inevitably placed Ms Gu at the centre of a global debate on geopolitics and representation.
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