(Bloomberg) — Online abuse heaped on China’s U.S.-born figure skater Zhu Yi after she fell during her programs is highlighting the intense nationalism that host-nation athletes must navigate at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Zhu’s performance during the women’s free-skate team event Monday, in which she fell for a second day, was denounced as a “disgrace” by users of the Twitter-like Weibo platform, who questioned why the 19-year-old was selected over a Chinese-born athlete. The hashtags “Zhu Yi’s consecutive mistakes” and “Zhu Yi tears up again on the ice” saw tens of millions of views on Weibo by Monday afternoon, with some commenting that the games weren’t a platform for practice.
Censors had stepped in to make the hashtag “Zhu Yi has fallen” unsearchable, after it gained over 200 million views over the weekend when the skater fell twice on her Olympics debut and finished last in the women’s short program team event. China finished fifth overall.
“There were some mistakes, but it has already passed. I hope I can adjust myself and compete well,” Zhu told state-run China News Service after her competition Monday. “I’ve been very moved and excited. Even during the program, I was moved and wanted to cry. I couldn’t hold it back, so I cried. Of course, there were also regrets.”
The vitriol directed at Zhu stood in contrast to the response to Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old freestyle skier, who like Zhu was born and raised in the U.S. and decided to compete for China. Gu, who models for some of the world’s biggest brands and whose face can be seen all around China in advertisements, is in contention to win three gold medals in the Olympics.
Though she fell in one of her runs on Monday, the hashtag “Eileen Gu’s cute expression after her mistake” was trending after the event.
Nationalistic voices have become louder on Chinese social media in recent years amid President Xi Jinping’s mantra of “national rejuvenation,” and particularly as relations with Western countries sour. Athletes that naturalize to compete for the Chinese team are under even greater scrutiny as the public are more likely to highlight their dual national identities, particularly in moments of under-performance.
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