American-born Olympian Eileen Gu, 22, has responded to Vice President JD Vance’s comment that she should not be competing for China in this year’s Winter Olympics.
During a Tuesday interview with Fox News, Vance suggested that because Gu was born and raised in San Francisco, California, she should compete for the United States and not her mother’s home country of China.
The freestyle skier then spoke with USA Today days later, where she responded to the vice president’s comments, saying, “I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s sweet.”
She was also asked if she felt “like a bit of a punching bag for a certain strand of American politics at the moment,” prompting Gu to agree.
“So many athletes compete for a different country,” she added. “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.”
The Olympian also admitted that Vance was not the only person to criticize her decision to not compete for Team USA, as she recalled being “physically attacked” on Stanford University’s campus — where she is a student — in “broad daylight.”
“It was pretty serious,” Gu said.
Her comments came after Vance told Fox News that he hoped American citizens would choose to compete for the U.S. on the world stage.
“I certainly think that somebody who grew up in the United States of America, who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that make this country a great place, I would hope that they want to compete with the United States of America,” Vance said.
“So, I’m going to root for American athletes. I think part of that is people who identify themselves as Americans. That’s who I’m rooting for in this Olympics.”
The skier has won two silver medals at the 2026 games, adding to her collection of two golds and one silver from the 2022 games in Beijing. Even though she is the most decorated female Olympic freestyle skier, Gu’s citizenship has been a point of contention, as this is her second Olympics competing for China.
Her reasoning behind that decision is that she wants to help make the sport more mainstream in China, since the U.S. “already has the representation,” she told Time Magazine earlier this year.
The International Olympic Committee requires athletes to be citizens of the nations they represent, noting on its site that a “competitor who is a national of two or more countries at the same time may represent either one of them.”
