A whirlwind blew through the Olympic capital yesterday. Call it Hurricane Gu. The Olympics has a new superstar: not only a phenomenal, courageous athlete but a masterfully engineered product of the modern age that has swept all before her. A heaving media was left astonished by her bravura, intelligence and ability to spin the politics as masterfully as the shapes she spun high in the Beijing air. And all that at 18.
Eileen Gu is fluent in three languages: English, Mandarin and freestyle skiing. She is American and Chinese, twin allegiances that are transforming her into a commercial giant. She will endorse products, she says, but only those to which she can give her moral approval. And you become an advertising hoarding like Gu only