The image was impossible to miss. A once celebrated American prodigy hit the rails, lost control, and watched her gold medal hopes vanish in seconds. For many viewers back home, it felt less like heartbreak and more like poetic justice.
Eileen Gu rose to fame as a teenage skiing sensation, training in American resorts and competing under the U.S. banner early in her career. She became a household name long before she was old enough to vote. But that admiration curdled when she made a calculated decision to abandon Team USA and compete for China, a country she had never lived in, ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
That choice followed her to the Milan Cortina Games, where expectations were sky high and the spotlight relentless. On her first serious rails attempt, Gu went down. The mistake was costly. The gold slipped away, landing instead with Switzerland’s flawless technician, Mathilde Gremaud, who executed cleanly when it mattered most.
For the second straight Olympic cycle, Gremaud delivered under pressure. Gu did not.
Yet the reaction on American social media was far louder than the crash itself.
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