Beijing Olympics spotlight: The pressure on face of the Games Eileen Gu is immense

Eileen Gu is already one of the most marketable sports people on the planet. At the age of 18, the freestyle skier and model is the best women’s halfpipe athlete in the world and she has already been on the cover of Vogue. The extremely talented teenager is the face of the Beijing Olympics, but from the outside she is at the centre of a soft power grab by China, whether she likes it or not.

Born and raised in the US, she has chosen to represent the land of her mother. No one can question how much that means to her, but it comes with controversy too. The good news is, she appears to have the mentality to shrug it off.

Ad/> To give this some context, picture being a 18-year-old who switched allegiances from Team USA to China aged just 15, effectively defecting to a nation where tensions are high between both countries. Gu identifies as an American when she is in the US and Chinese when she is in China — but this is all with the backdrop of the Biden administration staging a diplomatic boycott of the Games due to concerns over human rights abuses. To be at the centre of those politics will be difficult to ignore.

Beijing 2022Summerhayes proud to represent the White Rose at Beijing 2022A DAY AGO /> But Gu has the innocence to shrug that off. People will have varying opinions about whether sport and politics mix, and therefore there will be a mix of views about whether the teenager should be talking about the issue and she has made the sensible decision to leave the talking to her skiing. “I feel that I am competing in skiing to unite two nations, both of which are my home,” Gu told the South China Morning Post.