The Olympics have become more politicized than ever with the growing tension between China and the U.S. and Russia and the U.S.
I was shocked to see this headline since I had known women’s skiing favorite Eileen Gu was going to be competing for China for three years. Yet somehow the New York Post decided to sensationalize this decision of hers by calling it a defection. Whereas sometimes athletes choose to compete for another country simply because they could not qualify in the United States, this was not the case for Eileen Gu. She already won the debut Big Air event and is the favorite to win both halfpipe and slopestyle.
It should come as no surprise that she chose to compete for China when the United States’ actually charges many athletes to be on the US Ski Team. The United States only pays athletes $37,500 for a gold medal, while China paid $51,000 in 2008. I was unable to find out if China pays their team, but they do spend a large amount on training.
The simple fact of the matter is that Eileen made a decision when she was 15 to compete for her mother’s country of China. While nationalists in the United States might criticize her for it, Miss Gu herself had the best response to this silliness.
In contrast, there has been no outcry over halfpipe skier Gus Kenworthy choosing to compete for his mother’s home country of Great Britain. Where are the headlines about his defection? Where’s the outrage? It would appear he made this choice because it would have been harder to qualify in an incredibly good US field. Whereas Eileen Gu could qualify in three events no matter which country she competed for. I guess it is alright to “defect” but not to China!
Eileen Gu isn’t the only made up controversy of the games. It appears a figure skater also “defected” to China. Zhu Yi renounced her US citizenship in 2018 and is competing for China. Her debut did not go as well as Eileen Gu’s gold medal performance. The western media was quick to jump on this with claims that she was being attacked by Chinese social-media users after she fell during a figure skating routine. This is the nature of social media and it turns out most of the comments were positive. It is almost as if the western media has a vendetta against China.
Then there was this weird headline in the Daily Mail.
Uyghur skier, 20, who became the face of China's Winter Olympics and carried the Olympic torch 'disappears' after finishing 43rd in her Nordic combined debut
Once you read the article, it turns out that Dinigeer Yilamujiang and three other Chinese athletes simply slipped away without talking to media. This is a common occurrence:
She quietly slipped away after the event alongside three other Chinese athletes through a 'mixed zone', which allows athletes to pass through without having to answer questions from the media.
Yet according to the headline, she disappeared. She went on to compete in another event and there really is nothing controversial to be seen here other than the misleading headline. But the western media continues to play up their tale of Uyghur genocide, which has been primarily based on one source, far right religious extremist Adrian Lenz, who was paid to create the story. The Gray Zone has covered this several times. If there was really a genocide, would Dinigeer Yilamujiang have been given the place of honor during the torch lighting ceremony? Did Germany have Jewish athletes competing at the Olympics in 1936? No, with one exception they were barred from competing. The US state department has boycotted the Beijing Winter Olympics while they did not boycott the Berlin Olympics.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Olympics. They are an obscene display of opulence when many on the globe are still living in poverty. But China has done far more to address poverty than the United States has, when they lifted 800 million from extreme poverty. The United States tends to put people into poverty with their global wars, interventions, and sanctions. China is not currently bombing any other country. The United States has bombed Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia in the last year. The US continues to impose deadly sanctions on Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, and many other countries and supports the Saudi Arabian war on Yemen which has created the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. No one in the US should be criticizing China while our own house is not in order.