![]() ![]() The American teenager was now wearing a red-and-white Team China uniform, her bleached-blonde hair falling over the red five-star flag stitched on its front. On February 1st 2019, less than a week after singing the “Star-Spangled Banner”, Gu reappeared in Beijing at an audience with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. The newly crowned world number-one freestyle skier was going below the radar for a few days because she had a very special meeting to attend. ![]() Nor was it, as Gu wrote cryptically six days later on Instagram, “a quick #hongkong pit stop before going home (finally)”. It was hardly the fastest route back to high school in San Francisco. Gu spends part of every summer in Beijing, but this detour was unusual. As most of her American teammates raced home for the World Championships in Utah, Gu and her mother, Gu Yan, flew off in the opposite direction – to China. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” ![]() And she sang: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. On the podium, sporting her first World Cup gold medal, Gu placed her hand over her heart as the American national anthem began to play. After her final jump – two and a half turns in mid-air to a perfect backward landing – the pixels on the leaderboard rearranged and Gu’s name suddenly appeared in first place, next to the American flag. In a blur of black and red, Gu sped down the slope. In fourth place behind two American teammates, the 15-year-old California schoolgirl needed a dazzling finish to move closer to the goal she’d promised herself – and her mother – since she was a nine-year-old daredevil: competing in the 2022 Winter Olympics, now slated to take place in her mother’s birthplace, Beijing. It was January 2019, and the newest and youngest member of the US freestyle ski team stared down the Italian mountain course that had foiled her on her first two runs in the World Cup final. ![]()
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