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Move over Eileen Gu, there is a new California-born Chinese-American Winter Olympic gold medalist queen of Instagram. And this one represents the purple, white and blue.
Team USA’s Alysa Liu reached 5.3 million followers on Instagram on Tuesday, only one week after profitable the nation’s first particular person Olympic gold medal in ladies’s determine skating in 24 years.
Liu immediately turned a worldwide sensation and fan favourite amongst loyal Team USA followers of all backgrounds and beliefs.
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Gold medalist Alysa Liu of the United States shows her medal after competing within the ladies’s free skate program in determine skating on the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Prior to the beginning of the Olympics, Liu had lower than 300,000 followers on Instagram. But her efficiency within the ladies’s last propelled her to worldwide superstardom, as arguably the most important story of this 12 months’s total Winter Games.
Meanwhile, Gu, a snowboarding star who competes for Team China regardless of being born and raised within the U.S., received a gold medal herself and two silvers. It introduced her whole Olympic medal tally to 6 with three golds, making her probably the most adorned ladies’s freeskier within the sport’s historical past.
However, Gu now sits nicely beneath Liu by way of Instagram followers with simply 3.7 million. Liu is on tempo to doubtlessly double that quantity.
Prior to the beginning of the Olympics, Gu had over 2.1 million followers, so she did see a bump. But it couldn’t evaluate to the meteoric surge for Liu, who is among the most ascendant figures in all of sports activities in the meanwhile.
Even Gu herself received concerned within the hype over Liu. Gu commented on Liu’s submit celebrating the gold medal, cheering her on.
“YESSSSSS,” Gu wrote within the remark part.
The two Chinese-American stars have been relentlessly in contrast and contrasted on social media this Olympics.
Both athletes are the kids of immigrants who got here to the U.S. from China. But many followers and critics have been fast to level out the distinction between Liu’s story, a story of American loyalty by an immigrant’s baby, and Gu, who selected to compete for Team China when she was 15 years previous regardless of dwelling in California.
Arthur Liu raised Alysa and her siblings in Oakland. Yan Gu raised Eileen simply throughout the bay in San Francisco.
Their paths diverged in 2019.
The Chinese authorities launched a program to recruit foreign-born athletes, primarily with Chinese heritage, to spice up competitiveness, notably for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and soccer, in line with The China Project.
Gu and Liu had been prime recruiting targets.
Gu traded in her purple, white and blue for purple and gold. Just months after competing in her first Freestyle Ski World Cup for the U.S. in January 2019, she competed for China for the primary time in June of that 12 months after requesting a change of nation with the International Ski Federation.
The Lius remained loyal to Team USA.
FBI agent, Alysa Liu, Chinese navy (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images, Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP through Getty Images)
Arthur was reportedly “not open to persuasion” to having Alysa compete for China, in line with The Economist.
Liu and her household then discovered themselves within the crosshairs of China’s authorities forward of the 2022 Beijing Games amid her father’s previous and her personal refusal to compete for China.
Before her look within the 2022 Beijing video games, she and her father had been the alleged targets of a spying operation by the Chinese authorities.
Liu referred to as the expertise “a little bit freaky and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so … unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that’s crazy,” Liu beforehand instructed Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview on the USOPC Media Summit in October.
“Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like In a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real. Like, I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from like everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
Both athletes then competed on the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu representing China and Liu representing the U.S.
Gu received two gold medals and one silver in freeskiing and went house to California as a brand new world family identify for her success.
Liu completed in sixth place in ladies’s singles determine skating, then went into a brief early retirement, earlier than returning to the game in 2024.
Now, after a profitable 2026, Liu has emerged because the extra common determine among the many Western world, particularly amongst Americans, and significantly amongst conservatives.
Many high-profile conservative influencers on social media showered Liu in praising for bringing the historic gold to the U.S., together with Megyn Kelly, Clay Travis, Dave Portnoy, and others.
Gu broke down in tears after profitable gold within the ladies’s halfpipe last on Sunday, revealing that her grandmother had died previous to the competitors.
It concluded an Olympics through which she needed to compete below the stress of immense world scrutiny in response to her choice to compete for China seven years in the past.
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Gu was requested if she feels “like a bit of a punching bag for a sure strand of American politics.”
“I do,” she mentioned, in line with USA Today. “So many athletes compete for a different country. … People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity, and they just hate China. So, it’s not really about what they think it’s about.
“And additionally, as a result of I win. Like, if I wasn’t doing nicely, I believe that they most likely would not care as a lot, and that is OK for me. People are entitled to their opinions.”
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