Transnational Pride

If you haven’t heard of Eileen Gu, it’s probably not because you’re boycotting the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games but because, like me, you didn’t even realize the Olympics had already started until a day or more into the events. I’m not sure whether that says more about me or the popularity of this biannual event that is heavy on ads and niche records and light on the kind of patriotism present in earlier generations (the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team comes to mind)—but it says something.

Gu is an athlete from San Francisco who has drawn media attention because she has chosen to compete for China’s ski team, rather than the United States’. The 18-year-old athlete has spent her 10-year ski career in the United States and was raised in California by her mother, a Chinese national, and grandmother, who speaks only Mandarin. At the age of 15, Gu decided to compete for China. She says this “incredibly tough decision” was inspired by her mother. More recently, Gu also expressed a desire to inspire young Chinese athletes to pursue skiing, in a nation where winter sports have historically been unpopular and mostly unsuccessful.

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