Skier Eileen Gu of Workforce China has been a breakout star of the Beijing Winter Olympics. She gained three medals — two gold and one silver — and has been a voice for girls’s equality on the Video games.
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Skier Eileen Gu of Workforce China has been a breakout star of the Beijing Winter Olympics. She gained three medals — two gold and one silver — and has been a voice for girls’s equality on the Video games.
Cameron Spencer/Getty Photographs
BEIJING — When Eileen Gu, the freestyle skier from California who competes for China, stepped to the microphone after profitable two gold medals and a silver, she was launched as “the princess” of the Beijing Video games.
The Chinese language media has dubbed Gu the ‘snow princess.’ The 18-year-old is a outstanding athlete – spinning and twisting via the air above the halfpipe.
She’s additionally the breakout star of those Winter Olympics, dominating information protection inside China and rising as a global sports activities model.
Gold medallist China’s Gu Ailing Eileen poses on the rostrum in the course of the venue ceremony after the freestyle snowboarding girls’s freeski halfpipe on February 18, 2022.
Marco Bertorello/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Gold medallist China’s Gu Ailing Eileen poses on the rostrum in the course of the venue ceremony after the freestyle snowboarding girls’s freeski halfpipe on February 18, 2022.
Marco Bertorello/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
“Enormous honor to be the primary free skier to podium in three occasions as a lady,” Gu advised reporters on the packed press convention. “It additionally makes me very hopeful about what the following era can accomplish.”
That is the sort of story Olympic officers love to focus on. Girls have made huge features from the primary Winter Video games a century in the past when solely a handful of girls competed.
Practically half of the athletes in Beijing are girls
IOC spokesman Mark Adams says gender steadiness is now almost equal. “We’ve got a file quantity — 45.4% girls — competing [in Beijing],” he stated.
That gradual evolution displays work by worldwide sports activities officers who added a brand new women-only occasion this yr, the monobob sled competitors, in addition to extra blended occasions the place women and men compete collectively.
“It sends a sign from the IOC to the nationwide Olympic committees that they should construct up the capability of their girls groups and put money into their girls’s groups, their girls’s athletes,” Adams stated.
The IOC has additionally regularly shifted its strategy to broadcasting the Video games. All the tv photographs from Beijing are filmed by the IOC’s personal in-house operation generally known as the Olympic Broadcasting Companies. That footage is then distributed to networks that pay like NBC within the U.S.
The OBS has confronted criticism prior to now for sexualizing feminine athletes however the group’s head Yiannis Exarchos says they’ve gotten higher at exhibiting girls in methods not tilted by gender.
“It is not about who is gorgeous or engaging,” Exarchos stated. “It is about portraying enormous athletes whether or not they’re males or girls.”
Who holds the facility in worldwide sport?
However whereas participation and illustration of girls on the Olympics have improved, critics level on the market’s a darkish aspect to how girls are handled on the Video games.
Girls have fewer occasions, which suggests fewer possibilities to medal. They usually earn much less cash. There are far additionally fewer girls coaches and prime sports activities executives.
This lack of energy was highlighted in Beijing by the case of Kamila Valieva the 15-year-old Russian skater who discovered herself on the heart of a global doping scandal.
The top of the IOC Thomas Bach acknowledged that Valieva appeared incapable of constructing choices about her personal destiny.
“Possibly she would have most well-liked to only go away the ice and simply have this story behind her,” he stated.
Different girls determine skaters reacted to Valieva’s case by calling for extra protections for younger girls and ladies of their sport.
“It’s tremendous essential to…push the boundaries.”
Skier Eileen Gu stated this week she believes progress is required in different sports activities as effectively.
“Excessive sports activities everyone knows are closely dominated by males and it has not had the sort of illustration and sporting fairness that it ought to,” Gu stated.
“I believe that as a younger biracial girl, it’s tremendous essential to…push the boundaries. That is what paves the paths for the following era of women.”
Gu stated she’s made the choice to focus extra of her time away from snowboarding, writing a e book and enrolling at Stanford College.
One footnote about gender steadiness at these Video games.
Whereas girls compete in fewer occasions than males, the vast majority of U.S. gold medals at these Winter Olympics have been gained by American girls, in occasions the place they competed alone or in blended sports activities with male companions.
Erin Jackson of Workforce USA skates to victory to win the gold medal in the course of the Girls’s 500m on February 13, 2022 on the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Richard Heathcote/Getty Photographs
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Erin Jackson of Workforce USA skates to victory to win the gold medal in the course of the Girls’s 500m on February 13, 2022 on the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Richard Heathcote/Getty Photographs
