(Bloomberg) -- Freestyle skier Eileen Gu won a second gold medal at the Beijing Olympics on Friday, further cementing her position as a sporting hero in China, the country she represents. In the U.S., where the 18-year-old was born, opinions are considerably more mixed.
Gu came first in the freeski halfpipe competition, bringing her total haul to three Olympic medals -- two gold and one silver.
“Winning the Olympics and getting into Stanford have been two of my biggest dreams in my life. Now I've achieved both,” said Gu at a press conference on Friday. The teenager will attend the university from this fall.
With regard to her success, she said talent was “a tiny portion. I would say more than 99% is attributed to my hard work.”
Gu has effectively become the face of the games in host nation China, receiving overwhelmingly positive coverage from state media. On the Twitter-like platform Weibo, the sportswoman has dominated trending hashtags since winning her first gold medal on Feb. 8. Social-media users have feverishly discussed everything from her sleep schedule to her preferred local snack (said to be a chive pie).
Read More: Eileen Gu Isn't the Only U.S. Athlete Competing for Another Nation
Meanwhile on Twitter, some American users are circulating photoshopped images of Gu next to Chinese President Xi Jinping or skiing over piles of dollars, with captions like “love China for money.” Fox News host Will Cain called her decision to compete for China rather than the U.S. “shameful” and “ungrateful.”
“You've got to pick a side because you're either American or you're Chinese, and they are two very different countries,” said Nikki Haley, who was the Trump administration's U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in an interview with Real Clear Politics. “Every athlete needs to know when they put their flag on, you're standing for freedom or you're standing for human rights abuses. There is no in-between.”
Yet right-wing criticisms like these have prompted other Americans to defend Gu.
The sports blog Defector takes the position that Gu -- a Stanford-bound teen who is both an Olympian and Louis Vuitton model, raised by a single mom -- is a rugged individualist and as American as it gets. Katie Drummond, head of global news at Vice Media, tweeted her support.
“Eileen is a machine,” said Cassie Sharpe, who won the silver medal at Friday's event. “She's already landing crazy tricks that nobody else is doing.”
“I feel like she's got so much room to grow and to push the sport,” Sharpe added.
“I compete for myself, and I'm the one who did the work,” Gu said after winning gold last week. “I am just as American as I am Chinese.”
She has resolutely avoided discussing controversial subjects, and her public appearances in the lead-up to the Olympics largely confined to competitions as well as sponsored photos and videos. If people don't like her, it is “their loss,” she has said.
The split between Chinese and U.S. perceptions of the skier reflects a broader divide in how the games have generally been received by China and Western nations.
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According to Henry Wang Huiyao, president and founder of the Center for China & Globalization, the games have brought China “enormous goodwill” and showed the world that the Chinese system works.
“China certainly can deliver, can implement,” he said. “China can do all this great stuff.”
Wang added that the Olympics have helped to create a favorable international impression of the nation's Covid Zero strategy.
But one European diplomat in Beijing said that for many people in Europe, China's Covid policies came across as extreme and did not engender positive feelings.
The food offered inside the Olympic bubble has also received mixed reviews. Chinese media have highlighted hearty praise from some U.S. athletes, while Western journalists have reported deep disappointment.
There's a distinct difference between the Olympics' television audiences in China and the U.S. too. Almost 600 million Chinese viewers -- about half the country's population -- have watched the games on TV this year, with the opening ceremony becoming the most-watched program in a decade. In the U.S., viewership numbers at the event's midpoint were close to half of what they were during the games in PyeongChang, South Korea, four years ago.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
With assistance from Bloomberg
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