All-American skier Eileen Gu has won a slew of medals at the Beijing Olympics — but the California-born athlete is shredding the snow for the Chinese national team, not her homeland!
The turncoat stunned the world when she announced she was embracing her Chinese mother’s heritage and competing under the flag of one of America’s most dangerous adversaries.
Sports and international relations experts believe the rising Olympic star is being played like a fiddle by the Chinese government, which regards the 18-year-old American beauty as a prized show pony and propaganda puppet!
“This is a major coup for them,” says Chinese international affairs expert Dr. James Garrow. “They are celebrating she has chosen to identify as Chinese rather than American and will play it up for all it’s worth!”
Eileen’s mother, Yan, has a history of business dealings in China, and Dr. Garrow believes the Chinese have sweetened the pot for mother and daughter.
“This relationship will be lucrative for both of them,” says a source familiar with sports endorsements.
“The amount of money and support she gets from China will be so much higher than what she would get in America,” adds Mike Hanley, who heads Oregon’s Wy’East Mountain Academy, which trains Olympic skiers.
The athlete and model has signed lucrative endorsement deals with more than 20 major Chinese companies — many with links to the government — including the Bank of China, China Mobile and JD.com, the nation’s largest retailer.
“She’s endorsing products no foreigner ever had the opportunity to come close to because she’s being positioned as one of their own — who turned her back on America,” says Garrow.
A U.S. sports industry insider believes having the unwitting American on their team gives the Chinese a smokescreen to hide the nation’s warts — including poverty, human rights violations and holding the Uyghur Muslim people in Xinjiang province concentration camps!
“The politics” of Eileen’s decision “are ugly,” according to Chinese-American authority Julian Ku.
Eileen explains away selling out America by saying she hopes to inspire Chinese girls to take up skiing.
But former Winter X Games gold medalist for the USA women’s team Jen Hudak calls the move “opportunistic” because Eileen is not from China.
“This makes me sad,” says Hudak.
