Do we like Eileen Gu?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A clean run on LGBTQ+ and women's issues and real work for girls in sport, held back by a shrug on China's human rights record.
Eileen Gu was born and raised in San Francisco by her Chinese-born mother and maternal grandmother, who put her on skis at Lake Tahoe at age three. In 2019 she asked the international ski federation to switch her from the US to China, calling it an “incredibly tough decision”. She went on to Stanford and became one of the biggest names in freestyle skiing.
The big stoush is that switch. At the Milan Cortina Games in February 2026 she added gold in the halfpipe and two silvers, six Olympic medals in all, and copped a pile of political heat. US Vice President JD Vance said he would hope someone raised and educated in America would compete for it, and Gu replied “I'm flattered. Thanks, JD! That's sweet.”
Then there's the money. The Wall Street Journal reported, as relayed by VnExpress, that Beijing's sports bureau budget listed a US$6.6 million allocation for Gu and fellow US-born athlete Beverly Zhu, and that their names were later scrubbed from the public version. VnExpress notes Gu has never publicly clarified her legal nationality, and reported no response from her on the funding. She has said she chose China to get more girls into the sport, not for money.
On the harm test, here's what turned up. Nothing on LGBTQ+ or trans people either way, no anti-vax or climate-denial material, and no run of culture-war grievance. The sticking point is Xinjiang: asked by Time about the persecution of Uyghurs that China is accused of, she said she hadn't done the research and didn't think it was her business. The Campaign for Uyghurs condemned the remark, while she and her defenders say she is an athlete who shouldn't be made to front any agenda.
She also says the anger is partly about winning. She told Fox she feels like a punching bag for a certain strand of American politics, and that critics “lump China into this monolithic entity”. She said she was physically assaulted, received death threats and had her dorm robbed at Stanford, though ABC7 reports she gave no dates or specifics in what it relays, so that's her account only.
On the good side, she has long pitched her China move as a way to bring girls into freeskiing, and her fellow Olympic champion Alysa Liu says she's “rooting for her always”. We found no court cases, no lawsuits and no credible misconduct claims against her. It's a thin-ish file in the best sense: a lot of noise about her passport, not much about her conduct.