A lot has been made of Eileen Gu and her decisions leading up to the Olympics here in Beijing. Nobody can question the young woman's abilities and talent, as she is one of the best freestyle skiers out there and proved it by winning two gold medals and one silver medal, the first freestyle skier to ever win three medals in one Olympics.
And wherever she competes here in Beijing, she draws a crowd. As I boarded the bus this morning at the Main Media Center bound for the train station, there wasn't room for one more person. I was confused as the mass exodus to the train station until I heard a couple of British guys next to me mention that Eileen Gu was skiing. Many of the people on the bus were workers who likely had the day off and were going to the event to see her ski.
Like the bus, the train also had the most people I've ever seen on it and when I got to the venue, in addition to the many people inside the closed loop with us, there were a large number of fans in the stands.
This marks the second time I have seen Eileen compete, the first being in the Big Air at Shougang last week and there was a hearty crowd there too. Her face is all over the promotional billboards and other signage promoting the Olympics and she is obviously the face of these Games. And it's easy to understand why.
What has garnered a lot of attention, at least to a few people who I talk with back in the United States, is her decision to compete for China instead of the United States. Eileen's mother is Chinese, but her father is American, she was born in America, grew up there and learned to ski there. She is enrolled to go to Stanford in the fall. Everything about her is American, except for her mother's nationality.
Now, I understand that the rules allow you to compete for a different country and I respect her right to make the choice of which country to represent. She has Chinese heritage, she's proud of it and that's just fine.
But I must admit, it surprises me just how much traction she gets here in Beijing, especially given that she is not technically from China. But the people here seem to love her and give her huge ovations when she competes (and medals).
She has said on many occasions that she looked at these Olympics as a chance to showcase winter sports to the Chinese people, opening up a lane to snow sports that she said might not have already been there. Her goal was to inspire young Chinese girls to follow in her footsteps and choose skis and snowboards. That is an admirable goal.
And it's understandable, that in the United States there are already plenty of role models in the winter sports to look up to. People like Jamie Anderson, Brita Sigourney and the like have made a name for women in the winter freestyle sports and maybe Eileen's choice was to try to be like them, but for the Chinese people.
Obviously, only she knows what she is thinking and why she made the decisions she did, but there's one thing that is undeniable. She is talented. The skiing I witnessed was incredible and no matter who she is representing, she is going to represent well.
There were tons of people at the halfpipe this morning to see Eileen Gu (and others) compete.
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