Inteviewer: What was it like to find yourself in the center of all this political discourse?
Liu: Ooh, am I?
Interviewer: I don't know if you feel you are, but there is all of this discourse around you and Eileen Gu. China and America are viewing you as like a liability or a hero.
Liu: Yes, I've seen that. I've known Eileen since I was 13 or something. We're from the Bay Area. She's super nice, and her mom is from China. I think people are hypocritical for shaming her for representing China. So in my head it's a bit hypocritical, because her mom is an immigrant. Y'all would have told her to go back to China. Now that they're back in China, you're mad. [Laughs] And it's sport, it doesn't matter what country we represent. Sport is sport, and she has a love for competition, she has love for the game. I think that's all that matters. There's no shame in going to where opportunity is.
The Soviet Union used to dominate in the Olympics as they could identify promising athletes and get them into programs to develop their talents regardless of status.
Yea and the parent comment would probably still be complaining about how those Olympians are only successful because they managed to get identified and put through these training programs that required lots of resources
Right, Venezuelan El Sistema is a much better glimpse of how things should be done if the world didnt suck but we got global capitalism and the olympics instead