- Teenage ski sensation
Eileen Gu is already a major celebrity in China. - So when she won an Olympic gold medal on Tuesday, fans flocked to congratulate her on Weibo.
Fans of Eileen Gu temporarily caused the Chinese social media platform Weibo to crash as they rushed online to celebrate the teenager becoming an Olympic gold medalist.
Gu, 18, won gold in the women's Big Air competition in Beijing on Tuesday, beating off competition from France's Tess Ledeux with a final jump score of 94.5.
According to CNN, Gu dominated searches on Weibo in the wake of her victory, with seven of the 10 top trending topics all about her triumph. As of around 9.30 a.m. ET Tuesday, the top trending story on the site relates to Gu's mother's comments about her victory.
Fans on her Weibo, where she has over 2.6 million followers, left more than 90,000 comments in less than 30-minutes after her win.
Hashtags related to Gu's win received more than 300 million views within an hour, which eventually caused the entire Weibo site to briefly crash, reports CNN.
Gu, who stopped representing the United States and began competing for China in 2019, is already a major celebrity in China.
On top of being a ski sensation who has already won eight international events, the Stanford University student is a model who has starred in campaigns for luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co.
She also boasts lucrative brand deals with Bank of China, China Mobile, and Beats by Dre, among others.
Gu's decision to represent China instead of the US has been a hot topic in Beijing.
Born in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother, Gu represented the US for for most of her life before making the switch to represent China three years ago.
As China does not recognize dual citizenship, Gu has not explicitly spoken about what citizenship she holds.
When asked about her citizenship last year, she said: "I'm fully American and look and speak the way I do. Nobody can deny I'm American. When I go to China, nobody can deny I'm Chinese because I'm fluent in the language and culture and completely identify as such."
In January, her sponsor Red Bull claimed she gave up her US passport in order to compete for China, however an article on the official Olympic site in the same month referred to her "dual nationality."
After her gold medal win on Tuesday, she again skirted round questions about her citizenship from multiple journalists.
"I definitely feel just as American as I am Chinese," she said. "I'm American when I am in the US and I'm Chinese when I'm in China.
"I've been very outspoken about my gratitude to both the US and China for making me the person who I am."