OK, let’s take a calming breath.
Phew. Feel better?
The purpose of that mini-meditation is to cleanse your thoughts of the 300 thinkpieces you’ve read today about Eileen Gu, a majestic freestyle skiing star who may win multiple golds in Beijing and is somehow simultaneously, according to the punditocracy, both a brilliant and savvy young woman who has parlayed her multicultural heritage into a dual-country financial and athletic empire AND an unwitting, naive tool of the Chinese government, the IOC and the judges who ranked her ahead of the unfortunate Tess Ledeux.
Granted, the latter is my fault. And Sean Ingle has written well about Gu’s adeptness at the first of the portrayals I’ve listed here.
But let’s take a moment to consider two underreported stories from yesterday …
First, Jessie Diggins is a badass. She and Kikkan Randall won gold in the 2018 Olympic team sprint while NBC’s Chad Salmela memorably yelled “HERE COMES DIGGINS! HERE COMES DIGGINS!” Yesterday, she became the first US woman to win a cross-country individual medal.
And most of all, let’s all marvel at how Nathan Chen set a world record in the figure skating short program while being harassed by a cat.