Fourteen Russian athletes compete for other countries in Beijing, but the American-born Eileen Gu steals the show with a gold medal for China

Eileen Gu is rivaling the controversial tennis player Peng Shuai for media attention, although for another reason.

The freestyle skier Gu, also a budding supermodel, has a Chinese mother and an American father. She was born and raised in California, but is capable of giving China three gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. She’s already one for one, having claimed the gold medal in women’s big air freestyle skiing on Tuesday.

For that “detail” alone, she also relegates to the background the 14 figure skaters, born in Russia, who are representing other countries in the Olympics.

The national teams of Georgia, Belarus and Azerbaijan have many of them. Competitors of Russian origin also appear in the delegations of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Ukraine.

According to RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, Ioulia Chtchetinina is the only one among all those athletes who is not a product of the Russian school. When she was a child, she moved with her family to Switzerland, and there she learned about winter sports. Over time she also met other couples who accompanied her in World and European championships.

Her current partner is Hungarian Mark Magyar, which is why she changed her sports citizenship and started representing a new country. Hungarian pairs have not skated at the Olympics since 1956.

As a rule, numerous athletes from traditionally powerful sporting countries are keen on a sudden change of nationality. It’s an opportunity for them to appear in major world events like the Olympics, which would be more difficult if they are not highly-ranked in their native country.

A statute in Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter states that athletes with dual citizenship can represent the country of their choice, and athletes who gain new citizenship or wish to change their Olympic status can do so if three years have passed since they competed for their previous country.

Several American-born competitors are also competing in Beijing for other delegations.

Eileen Gu announced her preference for China in 2019, having competed for the United States in the 2018 World Cup. She was already considered a rising star, and pundits felt she was sure to earn a spot on Team USA in 2022.

At the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, Gu debuted with three gold medals. A year later, for her first participation in the X-Games (the flagship competition of extreme sports), in Aspen, Colorado, she climbed on the podium three times. In March of the same year, during the World Championships, she won two gold and a bronze, her first major medals in freestyle skiing.

Before the Games, critics questioned Gu’s decision to compete for China. A former teammate, Jen Hudak, told the New York Post last week that while “it’s not her place to judge,” Gu’s decision “saddens her.”

Billionaire sponsorships surround Gu. On the streets of Beijing her face is everywhere, at bus stops and in shop windows. China has never won more than five gold medals at the Winter Olympics, so people seem to be celebrating in anticipation of the impending golden gift(s) from the American-Chinese Gu.

In PyeongChang 2018, China won nine medals, but only got a single gold in short-track speed skating

Gu is hardly the first athlete to represent a country other than the place they were born, nor is she the only American to compete for China at these Olympics. In fact, the majority of players on China’s hockey teams, both men and women, are foreign-born, The Globe and Mail reports.

“At PyeongChang 2018, the Korean ice hockey team employed 11 naturalized players of Canadian and American descent,” reflected Jung Woo Lee, a global sports industry expert at the University of Edinburgh.

China is also an exporter of athletes in some sports. At the Tokyo Olympics last year, five of the top 10 women table tennis players were born in China, but only two of them represented China, gold and silver medalists Chen Meng and Sun Yingsha.

Perhaps due to China’s dominance in table tennis, there is little controversy over players changing their nationality, just as few Americans or Canadians complain about hockey players representing other countries.

China’s men’s and women’s ice hockey teams at these Olympics, both mostly stocked with American-born players, are ranked 32nd and 20th in the world, respectively, according to The Globe and Mail.

In an interview with the New York Times before the Games opened, Gu declined to comment when asked about her citizenship status, according to the newspaper.

China does not allow dual citizenship but there is no official record that she has given up her U.S. citizenship.

Her main sponsors are not only world-famous ski brands and others, but also a large number of Chinese companies.

Chinese media often refer to her as the daughter of a Chinese mother and an American father, but there is no public record of Gu’s father. She declined to comment when asked if she knew anything about him, according to the New York Times.

Her mother Yan Gu, 58, studied chemistry and biochemistry at Peking University in the 1980s, then traveled to the United States to get a master’s degree. Since 2013, her LinkedIn profile says, she has owned her own company as a “private investor and China investment expert.”

Gu’s grandmother co-stars with her in social media posts, including short documentaries aimed at Chinese audiences

“When I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese. I am proud of my heritage and my American upbringing,” she told ESPN in January 2020.

In an interview with the Chinese news agency Xinhua in 2019, she explained her decision to compete for China was motivated in part by the authorities’ plan to attract 300 million people to winter sports.

Gu was in Beijing in 2015 when the city was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Games. In February 2019, she was in the front row of Chinese athletes posing with Xi Jinping.

“I hope through my pursuit of extreme sports, I can enhance the interaction, understanding and friendship between the Chinese and American people,” Gu wrote in Chinese on Weibo, a popular social networking site in China.

The news disappointed the American coaches who helped prepare her. Still, the U.S. Ski Federation issued a statement with their support and well wishes for her future.

Amid mixed reactions, Gu’s coveted medals will go to Uncle Xi and not Uncle Sam.