Last month, Taiwanese speedskater Huang Yu-ting (黃郁婷) was the subject of much controversy when she posted a video on Instagram of herself wearing the uniform of the Chinese speedskating team during a practice session ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Huang was not the only athlete who attracted attention at the Games over questions about national and racial identity.
Eileen Gu (谷愛凌) and Zhu Yi (朱易, formerly Beverly Zhu), two American-born athletes who renounced their citizenship to compete for China, were quickly accused of disloyalty by US commentators. Nathan Chen (陳巍), a Chinese-American figure skater on Team USA who won
These big expectations and big falls are part of any Olympics. This is particularly true for the winter games, when the crowd, in spite of itself, is always watching for the next terrible crash. What was striking about this particular saga was how much of it happened hors piste, beyond the bounds of the run whether on Twitter, where Shiffrin responded directly to an avalanche of insults and attacks, or literally off to the side of the slope at the Yanqing skiing center, where the camera stayed locked on her silent emotional breakdown.