Building on the story from last week’s episode, we discuss media’s reactions to Women’s Figure Skating event at Beijing 2022 and their complicity in the cycle of exploitation that led to the situation Kamila Valieva and her teammate Alexandra Trusova found themselves in.  

Furthermore, at Beijing 2022 Olympics, Chinese-American freestyle skier Eileen Gu became the first freestyle skier to ever win three Olympic medals at a single Olympic Games as well as the youngest skier to ever win an Olympic freestyle skiing medal. Her decision to represent her mother’s home country of China in international competition instead of the United States where Gu was born and raised, however, received more media attention than her historic medals. We discuss 18-year-old Gu as a face of geopolitical tensions between China and the United States as well as the impact of media’s coverage of her story on the future of sports.  

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What to do about the social media shaming of figure skater Zhu Yi (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/07/opinions/zhu-yi-olympics-figure-skating-positive-slamming-alaimo/index.html 

Eileen Gu is Trying to Soar Over the Geopolitical Divide (The New York Times): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/sports/olympics/eileen-gu-china-freeski.html 

Dramatics skates, reactions from unforgettable women’s free skate (NBC Sports): https://twitter.com/behindthegold/status/1494725802583375877 

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