China’s star skier was born in the USA – and still lives there

The 18-year-old San Francisco native is a top medal contender in those three events in the Beijing Olympics that begin Feb. 4. But she won’t be competing for Team USA.

In 2019, the U.S.-born Gu announced she would switch national affiliations and compete for China in 2022.

“This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make,” Gu wrote in an Instagram post at the time. She said she hoped her move would help “inspire millions of young people where my mum was born,” especially young girls. Through skiing, she added, she wanted to “unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”

Since then, Gu has become a star in freestyle skiing and a budding commercial celebrity with a suite of top-shelf sponsors in the U.S. and China. Less clear is her status in relation to her birth and adopted nations.

China’s policy isn’t to recognise dual citizenship. Recently one of Gu’s main sponsors, Red Bull, included on its website a passage that read: “At the age of 15, US-born Gu decided to give up her American passport and naturalise as a Chinese citizen in order to compete for China in Beijing — because Chinese law doesn’t recognise dual nationality.”

After The Wall Street Journal emailed asking Red Bull representatives to confirm that Gu gave up her U.S. passport, the passage disappeared from Red Bull’s website.

In response to a follow-up email asking why the passage was removed, a Red Bull spokeswoman replied: “We look forward to watching our friend Eileen Gu compete for China at the upcoming Olympics in Beijing.” The spokeswoman didn’t address the citizenship question.

Through her New York-based agent, Gu declined to comment for this article. Officials at China’s National Immigration Administration, which handles citizenship issues, didn’t immediately reply to a faxed request for comment.

Although Gu, also known as Ailing Gu, made her switch a couple of years ago, her appearance in the Beijing Games could hardly come at a more tense time between China and the West.

The U.S. and several other nations are staging a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, citing China’s suppression of a Muslim minority group and other human-rights abuses. Western nations also have criticised China’s muting of a sexual-assault allegation against a retired Chinese political leader posted on a social-media site of tennis pro Peng Shuai. Foreign Ministry spokespeople in Beijing have declined to answer questions about Peng.

For China, however, Gu’s presence couldn’t come at a better time. She’s a glamorous, charismatic young woman who could significantly boost China’s typically modest Winter Games medal haul by herself.

Gu has often said, “When I’m in the U.S., I’m American. When I’m in China, I’m Chinese.” Her embrace of both nations could keep her above the political fray. It also keeps her marketing value high in the world’s two largest economies.

Gu has signed with the IMG modelling agency, appeared in Vogue Hong Kong, and attended September’s Met Gala in New York.

A Red Bull-sponsored documentary series, “Everyday Eileen,” is already online, and Tencent is distributing it in China. Her roster of sponsors — glittering for an Olympic rookie — includes Victoria’s Secret, the Apple Inc. -owned Beats by Dre, the Bank of China and China Mobile. Chinese media reports have lauded Gu’s skill in everything from piano and ballet to rock climbing. CCTV, the state national television broadcaster in mainland China, has called her “the perfect child next door.”

Gu was born in San Francisco to an American father and Chinese mother who emigrated from mainland China in her 20s to study in the U.S. Gu was raised in the Bay Area by her mother and grandmother, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Gu’s mother was an avid skier and sent her daughter to ski school but steered her away from racing because she thought it too dangerous. Gu chased peril anyway, mastering the jumps, twists and flips of freestyle skiing.

Gu began competing in major international events as an American in early 2018, and won her first World Cup event at age 15, in slopestyle. Months later, in June 2019, Gu announced on social media that she would compete for China in the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

“It is of great significance to be able to participate in the Winter Olympic Games, especially in the city where my mother was born and the city I have been to every summer since I was two years old,” Gu told China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency last March. “On a personal level, it is even more meaningful to me. It is a great honour for me to represent China in the competition!”

Gu won a medal in each of skiing’s halfpipe, slopestyle and big-air events at the 2020 Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland. She’s the reigning world champion in halfpipe and slopestyle.

In January 2021, she became the first-ever Chinese X Games champion, winning gold in the ski halfpipe and slopestyle. She grabbed the bronze in big air.

China has never won more than 11 medals at a single Winter Olympics — first-place Norway won 39 at PyeongChang 2018 — and achieved its top mark of five golds at the 2010 Vancouver Games. Although China has undergone a yearslong effort to beef-up its Winter Olympic team in preparation to host the Games, including drafting gymnasts and martial artists into winter-sports events, it faces stern competition from traditional powers in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

It isn’t unheard-of for athletes to switch nations. American-born slalom snowboarder Vic Wild, who had complained of a lack of financial support from U.S. sports authorities, married a Russian woman and competed for Russia at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, winning two golds.

Data isn’t available on how many U.S. citizens have renounced their citizenship to become Chinese citizens, for athletic reasons or any other. But it’s rare for people born in the U.S. to renounce their citizenship in general, in part because the U.S. allows dual citizenship. In 2019, 2,071 Americans renounced — for China or any other nation in the world.

-The Wall Street Journal