Eileen Gu makes China an Olympic force on snow

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Eileen Gu was 8 when she started teaching young wannabe daredevils how to do backflips on trampolines during her summer visits to China.

"Back then, I would meet essentially the entire Chinese ski community at once," Gu said. "There just weren't that many people."

In the tricky, sometimes unpleasant discussion about why this 18-year-old freeskiing force of nature who was born and raised in San Francisco is competing for her mother's homeland of China at the Beijing Olympics, the most straightforward answer might just be hidden in that vignette.

Not that long ago, hardly anybody skied in China. These days, with the Olympics showcasing a whole new world of winter sports to the country of 1.4 billion, more people do. Girls, long marginalized, including in a sporting sense here, could really use a role model. Gu thinks she could be just the person.

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FILE - China's Ailing Eileen Gu competes during the women's World Cup freestyle ski halfpipe event in Calgary, Alberta., Dec. 30, 2021. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

"In the U.S., growing up, I had so many amazing idols to look up to," she said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press last winter. "But in China, I feel like there are a lot fewer of those. I’d have a much greater impact in China than in the U.S., and that’s ultimately why I made that decision."

But there are no simple answers to any facet of a discussion involving relations between China and the United States, and why an athlete with options might choose one over the over. Meanwhile, a lot has changed in China in the 2 1/2 years since Gu made her decision — and in the way