Two-time Olympic gold medalist and freestyle snowboarding star Eileen Gu will as soon as once more compete for China as a substitute of america at subsequent month’s Winter Olympics, insisting america “already has the illustration” regardless of earlier backlash over her resolution.
Gu, who was born in California, confronted criticism in 2022 for her resolution to symbolize China within the Beijing Olympics, the place she claimed gold within the girls’s freeski huge air and halfpipe and silver within the girls’s freeski slopestyle.
In an interview with Time Journal, Gu stated her resolution was based mostly extra on her skill to encourage participation within the sport, which historically was not in style in China.
“The U.S. already has the illustration,” Gu stated. “I like constructing my very own pond.”
Time additionally famous within the interview that “[Gu] insists the potential to earn extra representing Chinese language corporations didn’t cross her thoughts. ‘I’m glad that there’s sufficient cash within the sport now for individuals to assume that’s a consideration,’ she says.”
Gu, whose mom is Chinese language, grew up in San Francisco, however she stated earlier than the 2022 Winter Video games that she estimates she’s spent not less than 1 / 4 of her life in China.
Questions on her citizenship standing have been a significant level of rivalry throughout her earlier Olympic outing as a result of the Chinese language authorities doesn’t permit twin citizenship, which means the California native would have had to surrender her US citizenship to take action.
She dodged a number of questions on the time about whether or not she relished her US citizenship.
Time famous that Gu “decline[d] to have interaction on the citizenship query,” and that there was no proof to counsel she had relinquished her citizenship.
“I don’t actually see how that’s related,” she stated.
Gu, 22, enters Italy because the heavy favourite to defend her titles.
She picked up her record-extending twentieth World Cup profession victory and her fourth in slopestyle with a win on the Laax Open in Switzerland final week.
The Related Press contributed to this report.
