The Great Leap Forward

 Rarely does a story touch on as many issues personal to me as Eileen Gu's 2022 Winter Olympics run representing China. Olympics, China, America, international sports - it's a quadruple lutz of meaty topics. Her Winter Olympic performance across three events - Big Air, slopestyle, and half pipe, all on skis - netted her a gold, silver and gold and made her arguably the most memorable individual of the Games. The unique intrigue to the story however was her representing the host China, despite being born and raised in America. Her decision and citizenship status raised a lot of speculation and generated controversy in some minor subcultures of American society. 

Here are the facts - Eileen Gu was born in San Francisco to Yan Gu, a Chinese winter sports athlete who had moved to the US for Master's studies. Her father's identity is not public, but he is known to be a white American and to not have had a major role raising her. Eileen was born a US citizen and given the omniscient Chinese name of  爱凌 Ai Ling, meaning "Love Ice" but also sounding like Eileen. In some ways it seems her upbringing was very similar to that of an ABC (American-born Chinese), speaking Mandarin with her mom and maternal grandparents. However she spent a lot of summers in Beijing and it's pretty clear she has a closer grip to Chinese culture and Mandarin than the vast majority of ABCs.  In 2019 when she was 15, she decided to change her affiliation from the US and compete for China as a freestyle skier. 

Eileen has explained some of her reasons for changing, touting her close affiliation with China and her desire to inspire the Chinese youth to take up winter sports. Outsiders have speculated cynically that she did it for sponsorship reasons, soaking up the spotlight in the massive Chinese market in lieu of the crowded American one, or that Chinese propaganda had brainwashed her. The lowest rung of hateful American conservatives have branded her a traitor, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, and the "worst person in the world". Furthermore, as Chinese nationality laws prohibits dual nationalities for anyone over 18, questions have arisen over whether Gu has given up her American citizenship.

As is often the case with personal attacks, they reveal less about the victim and more about the insecurity of the attacker, in this case insecurity in America's global status. International sports have long struggled over rules designed to create firm team boundaries in a world full of fluid borders and identities. Examples abound of individuals representing countries other than their birth place for all sorts of reasons, to the extent that this Wikipedia page goes on and on.  Lots of people immigrate and choose to represent their naturalized country, like Somali-born distance runner Mo Farah who won gold medals for the United Kingdom. Others choose to represent the country of their parents, often because they are not good enough to represent their birth country, but sometimes because they want to support their heritage nation, like French ⚽ star Riyad Mahrez playing for Algeria.  Most international federations allow athletes some flexibility in choosing their sporting nationality.

As a nation of immigrants, USA sports have particularly benefitted from dual nationals, including athletes like Philip Dutton, Kaillie Humphries and Bernard Lagat who competed for the USA after having won Olympic medals for other nations. In many sports, the US revel in naturalized citizens. On the flip side, for the US men's ⚽ team, nearly half the stars are Europeans who happen to have a US passport for one reason or another. I suspect when the culturally French Jordan Pefok scores for the US in the World Cup, no one will complain about how he can't speak English. Meanwhile in sports where America excels, many athletes who miss the US cut often find their ways onto other countries' teams, such as WNBA star Becky Hammon playing for Russia. What America rarely sees is a homegrown superstar choosing to represent another nation. Even more notable is when that other nation is a geopolitical rival. 

Eileen Gu jumped into this firestorm when she chose to represent China. She easily would've been the top American competitor in all her events and a Wheaties Box idol - though granted that was not predetermined when she made her decision three years ago. Though I also am an outsider speculating, I think far less cynically about her decision. I think she just thought it would be fun. The Olympics will never be in China again in her lifetime, and it is so exhilarating to perform in front of a "home crowd." It is so much fun to appear in grand media appearances, smile on billboards, give interviews in Mandarin and be complimented on her fluency. Following her on Instagram, it seems she is soaking this all in.

Peeling back this successful stardom in China reveals the extent of colonialism in sports. Skiing in its many forms comes from Scandinavia and has spread largely through western culture. In fact, nearly every Winter Olympic sport and most Summer Olympic sports are essentially western sports. While the Olympics has tried to cultivate a reputation of facilitating truly global competition, they sometimes have the effect of facilitating Western dominance in sports they invented. All sports have regional differences based on culture, history, and access to equipment or facilities. It takes a lot of effort and time to bring sports to new countries. Skiing is particularly inaccessible, requiring snowy mountains, expensive resort infrastructure, personal equipment and instruction. No one raised in China will recreationally rise to become an elite skier at the level of skiers in Colorado or the Alps. China can only compete by intentionally finding good athletes as children and training them for these specific events. Gu is privy to her Chinese superstardom experience because she has the combination of being culturally adept in China and athletically trained in the US. It should be noted that Asian-American gold medalists like Chloe Kim and Nathan Chen don't experience the same sort of fame in South Korea and China, because they lack the ability and interest to connect with those countries.

My relevant experience is in ultimate frisbee, a sport invented in the 1970s in a New Jersey parking lot. When I played in college, there were tens of thousands of ultimate players in the US. When I moved to Hong Kong, there were around 100 regular players. The difference in level of play was enormous, and enabled an average collegiate player like me to represent Hong Kong in world tournaments. It was an honor and a thrill to attend these tournaments that were as grand as ultimate tournaments could get, wearing an official country jersey. Additionally it was meaningful to lift the level of play in Hong Kong, spread the wonderful sport to more people, and help this land where I go back 5 generations and love deeply. Even if I could represent the US, playing for Hong Kong provided a unique sense of fulfillment. I'm sure Gu felt similarly about representing China.

Regarding her citizenship, I found it pretty clear from her painful non-answers to pressing reporters that she had not given up her US passport. Admitting outright that she was receiving special treatment from the Chinese government would undoubtedly provoke a firestorm from Chinese netizens. My theory is that the Chinese government did make numerous unusual "nationality grants" to athletes in these Olympics - the Chinese hockey team was almost entirely American and Canadian. I certainly don't believe Gu will attend Stanford next year as an international student. This awkward nationality issue only arises because of China's strict rules and usually isn't an issue with European nations.

Hanging over this entire Olympics have been China's human rights abuses and general place in the global world order. What the CCP have been doing to destroy Uyghur and Tibetan identities are crimes against humanity, and I think I've made my feelings about the crackdowns in Hong Kong pretty clear. The authoritarian government in Beijing has taken a disturbingly nationalistic turn in the last decade, questioning whether these Games should've taken place there at all. When Eileen Gu wears the Chinese National Team outfit, she does in part represent that authoritarian government. However, she is also representing 5,000 years of history and the world's largest nation with a vibrant middle class. Accepting citizenship does not mean one condones everything that country has ever done, but rather that they accept the present whole, warts and all. We wouldn't like it if Russian media pressed naturalized American gymnast Nastia Liukin to answer for the invasion of Iraq. Neither should an 18 year old ski jumper be held responsible for mass internments in Xinjiang. 

The bottom line is that we shouldn't take sports allegiances too seriously. Athletes change allegiances and make surprising representation choices for all sorts of personal reasons which are rarely geopolitical in nature. We should want to move towards a world in which where one starts doesn't dictate where one ends up.