Olympian Eileen Gus decision to snub US and ski for China is nothing short of a hypocrisy

It isn’t easy being Eileen Gu. The champion freestyle skier said the other day, after she had to settle for a silver medal in an event at the Olympics, that “sometimes it feels like I’m carrying the weight of two countries on my shoulders.”Gu would be carrying the weight of only one country if she had chosen to represent her native USA at the games, rather than a hostile totalitarian state. Gu skis for China, a choice that is a little like deciding to a represent a fascist country during the 1930s.China is bent on undermining US power and supplanting Western values.It runs a gulag and has established a surveillance state that would make George Orwell blush.It is contemplating an invasion of Taiwan and is almost certainly the country most likely to nuke Los Angeles in a major war. Gu’s explanations for why she turned her back on the country where she was born and raised (her mother is a Chinese immigrant) are tinny and unpersuasive.She’s spent significant time in China and says she admires Chinese culture, but there would be many ways to express that feeling without giving Beijing the propaganda victory of a superstar athlete draping herself in its flag.She says she thought she could inspire more girls to take up skiing by competing for China, with its nascent freestyle skiing program, than if she stuck with the U.S. Really? Given that Gu is charismatic and gorgeous and has a legitimate modeling career on top of being a top-notch skier, she’d still be a compelling ambassador for the sport even if she competed under the Stars and Stripes. What Gu insists had absolutely nothing to do with her decision is money, although she made an estimated $23 million over the last year, padded by a litany of Chinese endorsement deals. Who knows what inducements she’s been offered to be the centerpiece of Beijing’s effort to recruit more foreign athletes in order to enhance its national prestige?Gu came to the defense of US Olympian Hunter Hess, after Presiden...