My Olympic interest is near-zero, but Eileen Gu's story has managed to filter through. And Rich Lowry is unimpressed with it: Olympian Eileen Gu's decision to snub US to ski for China is nothing short of a hypocrisy.
It isn’t easy being Eileen Gu.
The champion freestyle skier said the other day, after she had to settle for a silver medal in an event at the Olympics, that “sometimes it feels like I’m carrying the weight of two countries on my shoulders.”
Gu would be carrying the weight of only one country if she had chosen to represent her native USA at the games, rather than a hostile totalitarian state.
Gu skis for China, a choice that is a little like deciding to a represent a fascist country during the 1930s.
And there's much more at the one-sentence-per-paragraph New York Post.
The WSJ, unsurprisingly, looks at the financial side of things: The Hidden Government Funding of China’s American-Born Olympic Star. (WSJ gifted link)
From the start of her freestyle skiing career, Eileen Gu has been a runaway financial success. When the U.S.-born star opted in 2019 to compete for her mother’s home country of China, sponsors flocked to her camera-ready charisma—and for her access to one of the world’s largest markets.
But Gu, who grew up in the Bay Area and studies at Stanford, might be even more valuable to the Chinese government than she is to backers such as Porsche and Red Bull. And in the leadup to this Olympics, it became clear just how much China was willing to pay to support her.
In 2025, the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau was set to pay Gu and another athlete a combined $6.6 million.
That figure emerged in a public budget that was released in early 2025. It accidentally included the names of Gu and figure skater Zhu Yi or Beverly Zhu, another U.S.-born Olympic athlete who competes for China. The document didn’t break down their individual payments, though it’s likely that Gu, a three-time Olympic medalist, received a larger share of the funding.
That revelation was quickly scrubbed from the Chinese Interwebs, as were comments about it. "Forget it, Jake. It's China."
Both the Rich Lowry column and the WSJ story are cited in Jim Geraghty's NR Corner post: American-Born Skier Eileen Gu Gets Paid Millions by the Chinese Government. (NR gifted link) Jim's bottom line:
I see some academic type has lamented that Gu was “subjected to conditional belonging by the media, whereby their status as Americans was contingent upon their perceived loyalty to the United States.” Eh, when you choose to not represent the country where you’re a citizen, where you were born, where you were raised, and where you train, and then agree to represent another country that pays you millions of dollars… is it really that outrageous to question her loyalty or to no longer think of her as one of “our” athletes?
It would be fantastic if some enterprising NBC reporter should dare to ask Eileen Gu some hard, pointed questions about this. "Fantastic", that is, in the classic sense: "remote from reality" and "almost certainly not gonna happen."
Also of note:
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Could you tell me again why I should vote for Republicans? Eric Boehm reports on The Cowardice of the Republican 'Tariff Skeptics'.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Calif.) describes himself as a "tariff skeptic."
In that regard, his judgment seems sound. President Donald Trump's tariffs are hiking costs for businesses and prices for consumers. They are not delivering the promised boom in manufacturing jobs. Polls show that most Americans dislike them.
Unlike most Americans, however, McClintock was in a position this week to translate that skepticism into action.
Given that chance, McClintock (and the vast majority of his Republican colleagues) chose cowardice and voted to continue Trump's unilateral executive control over American trade policy.
We'll see who winds up on my ballots later this year, I guess. (September Primary, November General.) It's difficult to fill in the little ovals with one hand holding my nose, and I may just give up.
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