Alysa Liu vs Eileen Gu: Chinese American stars took divergent paths to Olympics

Just minutes after Alysa Liu gained a historic Olympic determine skating gold for the U.S., her story because the little one of a Chinese American immigrant who fled communism unfold like wildfire throughout social media. 

Almost instantly, that discourse advanced, in lots of circles, into comparisons to one other Chinese American famous person who has dominated headlines in Milan Cortina — American-born Team China skier Eileen Gu.

“Alysa Liu > Eileen Gu,” Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy wrote in a submit on X. “The triumph of America over China!” 

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Other pundits have been fast to level out the distinction between Liu’s story, a story of American loyalty amongst an immigrant’s little one, and Gu, who selected to compete for Team China when she was 15 years outdated regardless of dwelling her life in California. 

“Eileen Gu is unlucky that Alysa Liu’s patriotism stands in stark contrast to Gu’s betrayal of her country,” American lawyer and political analyst Gordon Chang instructed Fox News Digital.

Just how completely different and the way related are the 2 Olympic superstars?

Liu and Gu have been every born to single dad and mom who left China. They each grew up within the Bay Area

Liu’s father, Arthur Liu, was there in Tiananmen Square within the spring and summer season of 1989. 

The Tiananmen Square protests, also referred to as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, proved to be a life-changing second for Arthur and a history-changing second for everybody else. Hundreds of Chinese college students and residents within the capital metropolis of Beijing have been killed by the nation’s navy for protesting the communist authorities. 

Arthur was later summoned to report to the Office of Chinese Communist Party Youth League to deal with his presence that day. 

“I refused to provide them any more names of students who had participated in the organization of the demonstrations. … I was going to take full responsibility for everything that had happened since at one time I was elected the president of the Guangzhou Autonomous Student Union of Universities,” Arthur Liu instructed USA Today. 

“Going to prison for me was a matter of time.” 

He had to sneak onto a ship to Hong Kong, risking up to three years in jail or a labor camp. The boat took an prolonged detour to keep away from navy detection. He later fled to California from there. 

“His persistence, and he’s brave too,” Alysa instructed Fox News Digital of her father throughout a roundtable interview on the USOPC media summit in October. “We all knew about it. He had some stories for us, but we also found out from our other relatives. They would tell us as well.”

In the Nineteen Eighties, Gu’s mom, Yan Gu, was a pupil at Peking University learning chemistry and biochemistry, in accordance to The New York Times. She got here to the United States to earn a grasp’s diploma, finally incomes it from Stanford. 

At age 40, Yan gave delivery to Eileen, and raised her as a single father or mother, according to Olympics.com. Not a lot is understood about Gu’s father. Eileen has not publicly commented on him and declined to reply questions on him with The New York Times.

And Liu does not even know her personal mom. She and Arthur’s 4 different youngsters have been conceived utilizing an nameless egg donor and a gestational surrogate. 

As a lawyer, Arthur Liu raised Alysa and her siblings in Oakland. Yan raised Eileen Gu throughout the bay in San Francisco.

Alysa started skating at age 5 when her father introduced her to the Oakland Ice Center. She later educated below Laura Lipetsky, a former determine skater who had educated below determine skating Hall of Fame coach Frank Carroll.

Gu excelled as a pupil and as an athlete all through her adolescence. She scored 1580 out of 1600 on her SAT exams. Every summer season, she went again to China for a couple of weeks to get further math follow, in accordance to The Guardian. 

Gu competed in her first Freestyle Ski World Cup in January 2019. At that point, she was representing the U.S. 

But it was the final time Gu would signify the U.S. 

China launched into a mission to recruit abroad athletes with Chinese lineage, particularly in America

It was referred to as the Chinese naturalization challenge. 

The challenge accelerated round 2018–2022, geared toward recruiting foreign-born athletes, primarily with Chinese heritage, to increase competitiveness, notably for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and soccer, in accordance to The China Project. 

Gu and Liu have been high recruiting targets.

Gu traded in her crimson, white and blue for crimson and gold. Just months after competing in her first Freestyle Ski World Cup for the U.S. in January 2019, she competed for China for the primary time in June of that 12 months after requesting a change of nation with the International Ski Federation.

In an announcement on Instagram, she mentioned she made the choice “to help inspire millions of young people” in China and “to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”

Seven years after the choice, Gu is the highest-paid Winter Olympic athlete on the earth, making an estimated $23 million in 2025 alone due to partnerships with Chinese corporations, together with the Bank of China and western corporations. 

Eileen Gu celebrates profitable a gold medal after competing within the freestyle snowboarding ladies’s halfpipe remaining throughout the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games at Genting Snow Park. (Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports)

The Wall Street Journal reported final week that Gu and Zhu Yi, a fellow American-born determine skater who now competes for China, have been paid a mixed $6.6 million by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau in 2025 for “striving for excellent results in qualifying for the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.” 

Overall, the 2 have been reportedly paid practically $14 million over the previous three years.

The Lius remained loyal to Team USA. 

Arthur was reportedly “not open to persuasion” to having Alysa compete for China, in accordance to The Economist.

Both athletes competed on the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu representing China and Liu representing the U.S. 

Gu gained two gold medals and one silver in freeskiing and went residence to California as a brand new international family title for her success. 

Liu completed in sixth place in ladies’s singles determine skating, then went into a brief early retirement. 

Gu has refused to reply questions concerning the Chinese authorities’s actions; Liu has been immediately focused by Chinese authorities actions

Gu has grow to be a goal for international criticism this Olympics for her determination to signify China whereas remaining silent on the nation’s alleged human rights abuses. 

In an interview with Time Magazine, Gu was requested her ideas on China’s alleged persecution of Uyghurs and different Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. 

“I haven’t done the research. I don’t think it’s my business. I’m not going to make big claims on my social media,” Gu answered. 

“I’m just more of a skeptic when it comes to data in general. … So it’s not like I can read an article and be like, ‘Oh, well, this must be the truth.’ I need to have a ton of evidence. I need to maybe go to the place, maybe talk to 10 primary source people who are in a location and have experienced life there. 

“Then I want to go see photos. I want to hear to recordings. I want to take into consideration how historical past impacts it. Then I want to learn books on how politics impacts it. This is a lifelong search. It’s irresponsible to ask me to be the mouthpiece for any agenda.”

Liu and her family, on the other hand, found themselves in the crosshairs of China’s government ahead of the 2022 Beijing Games amid her father’s past and her own refusal to compete for China.

Before her appearance in the 2022 Beijing games, she and her father were the alleged targets of a spying operation by the Chinese government.

US OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST ALYSA LIU WAS ONCE TARGETED BY CHINESE SPIES

Liu called the experience “just a little bit freaky and thrilling.”

“You know what I imply? It’s so … unbelievable. You know what I imply like, that is loopy,” Liu previously told Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.

“Like, think about discovering that out at such a younger age, I imply, like In a bizarre manner, I used to be like, ‘Am I like in some prank present?’ Like, is that this world actual. Like, I should be some film character. But, I imply, it was prefer it made sense to me, , from like the whole lot my dad did again in his activist days.”

One of the five men charged with spying on Chinese dissidents living in the U.S., Matthew Ziburis, allegedly contacted Arthur in November 2021, impersonating a USOPC official and asking for his and Liu’s passport numbers, The Associated Press reported at the time. 

Ziburis allegedly traveled to California’s Bay Area, where the Liu family lived, to surveil them and try to coax private information from the family that he could then supply to the Chinese government.

Her father told The Associated Press at the time, “They are most likely simply attempting to intimidate us, to … in a manner threaten us not to say something, to trigger hassle to them and say something political or associated to human rights violations in China. … I had issues about her security. The U.S. authorities did an excellent job defending her.”

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI got here to Liu’s assist. 

An FBI agent, Alysa Liu and a member of the Chinese military (Getty Images)

She first spoke with the FBI agent who would protect her family at length at a Japanese restaurant.

“I went, like, to eat dinner along with her a pair instances. I largely speak, as a result of, like, I’m additionally, like, actually all in favour of what she does, like guys like, that is so cool to me. Like, I do not know, similar to assembly with an FBI agent like that is loopy work,” she said. 

“You know, and I imply, like, not many individuals can try this. So I, , I’ve so many questions and, like, I’ve met with. Like, a psychologist there, not for me like as a result of, I used to be like, so interested in, like, what she does.”

Liu added the FBI made her feel “secure” throughout the situation.

The spy operation didn’t scare Liu off from competing in Beijing. But she had heightened security assurances from the U.S. State Department and USOPC, and at least two people escorted her at all times when she was there. 

She went into retirement shortly after the Beijing Games ended. 

“She grew to become actually sad,” Arthur Liu told USA Today about why she retired. “She averted the ice rink in any respect prices. She’s traumatized. She was simply traumatized. She was affected by PTSD, and he or she would not go close to the ice rink.”

But Liu made her return to the sport just two years later in 2024. By March 2025, she was already making history for Team USA, becoming the first American the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years. 

Her comeback included a storybook ending with Thursday’s gold medal performance. 

Liu hasn’t ruled out adapting her life and experience in an international spying incident into a movie.

Still, she has some preferences if her story makes it onto the big screen.

“They gotta make me seem like an excellent cool hero or one thing. And simply, I can not simply be the child that received spied on and did nothing about it,” she said. “But, actually, I might simply have the primary focus be like my dad’s story as a result of, like, his story is so cool and, like, additionally similar to the whole lot that solely occurred due to what he did, so, like, I really feel like we received to begin with the roots.”

Alysa Liu of the United States arrives to compete during the women’s figure skating free program at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026.  (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

All eyes turn to Gu, who has faced a storm of global controversy in Italy as social media rages with politically charged comparisons to Liu

With Liu earning gold on Thursday, Gu is now the last athlete between the two chasing a gold medal. Liu’s win on Thursday has ensured Gu will ski with the backdrop of viral, and often unflattering, comparisons to Liu by American patriots on social media. 

Chang told Fox News Digital that Gu “ought to depend her fortunate stars she was born an American. A beneficiant America allowed her to compete for China on the Beijing Olympics 4 years in the past after which let her again into the nation. If the reverse have been true, and he or she had been born in China, the Chinese regime wouldn’t have been so indulgent.”

Gu will compete in the women’s freestyle skiing halfpipe final on Sunday after only winning silver in her first two events. The event was postponed from after severe snow made the original scheduled time on Saturday unsafe. 

Gu had to overcome a near-disastrous crash during her first run of the qualifying round on Thursday to get to this final, and last chance to win Gold in Milan Cortina. 

It will be the climax of a games defined by immense global criticism for Gu. 

She brought backlash upon herself early in the games when she responded to a question about President Donald Trump criticizing U.S. Olympian Hunter Hess for being critical of the state of America.

“I’m sorry that the headline that’s eclipsing the Olympics has to be one thing so unrelated to the spirit of the Games. It actually runs opposite to the whole lot the Olympics needs to be,” Gu told reporters Monday.

“The complete level of sport is to carry folks collectively. … One of the only a few frequent languages, that of the human physique, that of the human spirit, the aggressive spirit, the capability to break not solely information, however particularly in our sport, actually the human restrict. How fantastic is that?”

Gu also claimed she had been “caught within the crossfire” herself. 

“As somebody who has received caught within the crossfire earlier than, I really feel sorry for the athletes,” Gu said. “I hope that they’ll ski to their easiest.”

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the controversy surrounding Gu in an interview Tuesday on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”

“I definitely assume that somebody who grew up within the United States of America who benefited from our schooling system, from the freedoms and liberties that makes this nation an ideal place, I might hope they need to compete with the United States of America,” Vance said.

When asked if she feels “like a little bit of a punching bag for a sure strand of American politics for the time being,” she said she does. 

“I do,” she said. “So many athletes compete for a distinct nation. … People solely have an issue with me doing it as a result of they type of lump China into this monolithic entity, and so they simply hate China. So, it is not likely about what they assume it is about.

“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.”

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Gu has claimed she was “physically assaulted” for the choice.  

“The police were called. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had my dorm robbed,” Gu told The Athletic. 

“I’ve gone through some things as a 22-year-old that I really think no one should ever have to endure, ever.”

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