Chinese censors step in after local fans attack American-born skater Zhu Yi’s Winter Olympics ‘disgrace’

Making her Winter Olympics debut for Team China in the women’s short program team event, American-born figure skater Zhu Yi was eager to prove herself to the Chinese public.

Instead, the 19-year-old is facing a firestorm on Chinese social media after she fell flat on the ice just 20 seconds into her routine on Sunday.

Watch her dramatic fall in the video above

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On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the hashtag ‘Zhu Yi has fallen’ gained 200 million views in just a few hours.

Many questioned why Zhu, an American-born skater, was picked to represent China at the expense of an athlete born in the country.

“This is such a disgrace,” said a comment with 11,000 upvotes.

By Sunday evening, the hashtag appeared to have been censored. It is unclear why.

Zhu was the first to compete on the second day of the figure skating team event, gliding into the ice rink to loud cheers from the mostly Chinese crowd at Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium.

But she tumbled and crashed into the wall after a failed jump in the opening combination, and missed another jump later in the program, finishing with the lowest score of the event.

China consequently fell from third place to the fifth in the standings - just enough to progress to the next round of competition.

“I’m upset and a little embarrassed,” Zhu said after the race, wiping her tears.

“I guess I felt a lot of pressure because I know everybody in China was pretty surprised with the selection for ladies’ singles and I just really wanted to show them what I was able to do but unfortunately I didn’t.”

Head over to 7plus to watch a replay of the short program

Chinese athletes face huge pressure to get