A Tale of Two Very Different Winter Olympian Queens

I do not get excited about the Olympics. The spectacle was diminished for me when it became an event for professional athletes, and many are prima Donna professionals at that. There was something magical about amateur athletes who sacrificed so much to have a shot at hearing their national anthem and maybe their picture on a box of Wheaties. But as I was trolling through the daily YouTube videos the other night, one caught my attention. It was Laura Ingraham and Clay Travis, two people I find extremely interesting and grounded, so I clicked in. The discussion was about two Gold Medal winners who took very different paths to the top of the podium.

The first was the newly crowned female ice champion from the United States, Alysa Liu. I did catch her medal winning performance, and it was an amazing display of someone at the pinnacle of their sport with the most carefree attitude I have ever seen in an athlete. She was having fun, and the pure joy lit up her face and was in every movement of her body as she glided across the rink. This was not always the case with Liu, who had to take a couple of years off from skating and life. Born in China, Liu’s father was under constant danger from the Chinese government since his participation in the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989. Liu brought his family to America to keep them as safe as possible from the long arm of the Chinese government. Alysa Liu is proud of her adopted country, which offered a safe harbor for her family, and gladly skates under the American flag. Her gratitude and love of America were on display during the medal ceremony.

Contrast that story with Eileen Gu, who was born on September 3, 2003, in San Francisco, California. Her mother, Yan Gu, is a first-generation Chinese immigrant to the United States. Her father is American, though Gu never discusses him. Gu is a free-style skier, Stanford student, Chinese citizen, runway model, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, was paid $14 million over the last three years by China to ski under its flag. Gu is an international studies major at Stanford, but claims she knows nothing of the plight of the millions of Muslim Uyghurs detained in concentration camps by the Chinese government. What she means to say is that $14 M buys a lot of silence and loyalty for the rulers in Beijing. America has afforded the Gu family a good life and opportunity, but Eileen found a willing cash cow even if that cow comes with a lot of constraints.

It is disappointing that politics supersedes the stories about the actual performances by these gifted athletes, but politics has become a measuring stick in every aspect of life.

Two young women, both in their twenties, and both at the peak of their sport. Both are in sports with very short shelf lives for their athletes, but these women will have the memories of Milan and the legacy of Gold Medal winners for a lifetime, but one other piece of baggage that will be with them is their stories about how they got there. I can see that smile lighting up the face of Alysa Liu for life, and the regret of taking the big payday dragging at Eileen Gu for decades. Too bad it is not just a story about skates and skis.