A US ‘traitor’ is making Olympic history – and Donald Trump’s minions can’t cope

CORTINA — Eileen Gu has already made history. Absolutely loads of it.

Only 22 years old, she has won five Olympic medals, making her the most decorated freestyle skier of all time. She’s going for a sixth on Saturday night, which would represent an unprecedented triple-double: medals in three freestyle skiing events at two consecutive Games.

She has also been branded a traitor by the country of her birth at Games, and is maybe the world record holder for coming out of both circumstances with the moral high ground comprehensively intact.

As an American-born athlete representing China at the Olympics, Gu has infuriated the feverishly patriotic US right wing, this time led by Donald Trump’s Vice President JD Vance, who said she had “benefited from the freedoms and liberties” of America and should want to compete for them.

“I’m going to root for American athletes, and I think part of that is people who identify themselves as Americans,” Vance said.

Gu responded: “I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s sweet.”

The 22-year-old was born in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother, and initially represented the US in international competition but quickly switched over to represent China from 2019, three years before the Beijing Winter Olympics.

That was before she started her international relations degree at Stanford in California, and long before she ended up on the radar of the American right, where it has become fashionable to call Gu “a traitor”.

“Eileen Gu is a US-born skier who is working for Communist China, a regime that wants to destroy our country,” wrote Andy Ogles, a prominent Republican in Tennessee.

“There must be consequences for those who betray the United States and support our adversaries.”

Gu is smart enough not to get into a tit-for-tat argument with her American detractors, and recognises that part of the pile-on is related to the enmity between the US and China.

“People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity, and they just hate China. So it’s not really about what they think it’s about,” says Gu.

“And also, because I win. Like if I wasn’t doing well, I think that they probably wouldn’t care as much, and that’s OK for me. People are entitled to their opinions.”

It is little surprise that she is so unflustered by Vance et al’s attempts to discredit her. Four years ago, China had initially billed her as the poster girl for the home Games. But after a social media backlash over the idea that she was no homegrown hero, raised in the US by distinctly middle-class parents and not a role model the Chinese Communist Party necessarily wanted to champion, they started to soft-pedal her in coverage, and censor certain topics online.

On the outside at least, Gu seems totally nonplussed by the criticism that seems to come from all sides – perhaps because it seems to have no significant impact on her status.

She is also one of the best-paid female athletes in the world, having made an estimated $23m (£17m) in off-field earnings in 2025.

And she continues to amaze on the slopes, turning up the big air having not competed in it for four years and winning a silver medal, before being the only woman to compete in all three events by taking on the halfpipe on Saturday night.

“It’s definitely impressive,” says said Great Britain’s Kirsty Muir, who finished fourth behind her in slopestyle and big air.

“After two events, my body is physically very tired, so it’s impressive that she is going on to do the three events and she’s doing a very good job of it.”

That’s probably the best compliment you can pay Eileen Gu. Whoever’s flag she is wearing, she is doing a very good job.