[82lsju]

Personally, I don’t have much interest in the Beijing Olympics, but there is an interesting story with a Stanford angle.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ol...-olympics/

Eileen Gu, who was born in San Francisco to a Chinese mother and will be enrolling at Stanford next year, will be competing for China.

BC

some more info here

https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/02/0...-for-china

In a blur of black and red, Gu sped down the slope. After her final jump – two and a half turns in mid-air to a perfect backward landing – the pixels on the leaderboard rearranged and Gu’s name suddenly appeared in first place, next to the American flag. “It’s unreal!” she screamed. On the podium, sporting her first World Cup gold medal, Gu placed her hand over her heart as the American national anthem began to play. And she sang: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”


There was little time to celebrate. As most of her American teammates raced home for the World Championships in Utah, Gu and her mother, Gu Yan, flew off in the opposite direction – to China. Gu spends part of every summer in Beijing, but this detour was unusual. It was hardly the fastest route back to high school in San Francisco. Nor was it, as Gu wrote cryptically six days later on Instagram, “a quick #hongkong pit stop before going home (finally)”. The newly crowned world number-one freestyle skier was going below the radar for a few days because she had a very special meeting to attend.

On February 1st 2019, less than a week after singing the “Star-Spangled Banner”, Gu reappeared in Beijing at an audience with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. The American teenager was now wearing a red-and-white Team China uniform, her bleached-blonde hair falling over the red five-star flag stitched on its front. Among the assembled athletes at the national winter-sports training centre, Gu stood in the front row, just a few feet from Xi, listening intently as he urged them to win honour for the motherland when it hosted its first Winter Olympics. “This is a once-in-a-century opportunity,” Xi told them. Their success, he said, was vital to “the nation’s great rejuvenation”.

[82lsju]

Personally, I don’t have much interest in the Beijing Olympics, but there is an interesting story with a Stanford angle.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ol...-olympics/

Eileen Gu, who was born in San Francisco to a Chinese mother and will be enrolling at Stanford next year, will be competing for China.

BC

some more info here

https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/02/0...-for-china

In a blur of black and red, Gu sped down the slope. After her final jump – two and a half turns in mid-air to a perfect backward landing – the pixels on the leaderboard rearranged and Gu’s name suddenly appeared in first place, next to the American flag. “It’s unreal!” she screamed. On the podium, sporting her first World Cup gold medal, Gu placed her hand over her heart as the American national anthem began to play. And she sang: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”


There was little time to celebrate. As most of her American teammates raced home for the World Championships in Utah, Gu and her mother, Gu Yan, flew off in the opposite direction – to China. Gu spends part of every summer in Beijing, but this detour was unusual. It was hardly the fastest route back to high school in San Francisco. Nor was it, as Gu wrote cryptically six days later on Instagram, “a quick #hongkong pit stop before going home (finally)”. The newly crowned world number-one freestyle skier was going below the radar for a few days because she had a very special meeting to attend.

On February 1st 2019, less than a week after singing the “Star-Spangled Banner”, Gu reappeared in Beijing at an audience with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. The American teenager was now wearing a red-and-white Team China uniform, her bleached-blonde hair falling over the red five-star flag stitched on its front. Among the assembled athletes at the national winter-sports training centre, Gu stood in the front row, just a few feet from Xi, listening intently as he urged them to win honour for the motherland when it hosted its first Winter Olympics. “This is a once-in-a-century opportunity,” Xi told them. Their success, he said, was vital to “the nation’s great rejuvenation”.