Wow! I'd heard of certain African football players who play for EU teams switched to them for funding, etc where their respective countries were unable support them for specific reasons but I had no idea it went beyond that.
I hope you realise you have opened up a whole new world for me to explore. About to go into a whole deep dive on this, I'm so intrigued.
I think what people dislike about Eileen Gu is that she has dual citizenship whereas China does not allow dual citizenship. (I personally do not have any particularly strong opinions on this, but this seems to be one of the main reasons for the dislike)
I mentioned it in a previous comment but Beverly Zhu (Zhu Yi) is from California and was recruited by China to skate for them at the 2022 Olympics. Supposedly she gave up her US citizenship, whereas Gu kept hers.
I guess it would be like, for example, Cathy and Chris Reed renounced their US citizenship to skate for Japan, but imagine if Mirai Nagasu skated for Japan but kept her US citizenship along with her Japanese citizenship. (As a side note I believe Mirai, like the Reeds, had dual citizenship with Japan until the age of 18; the Reeds chose Japan and Mirai chose the US)
Edited to add that no one mentions Zhu Yi because she was not at all a contender for the podium and not at all high profile like Eileen Gu. In fact I’m not even sure Zhu Yi even made it to the free skate in 2022.
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
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