Eileen Gu faces social media backlash after criticizing President Donald Trump while remaining silent on China's alleged human rights abuses. Enes Kanter Freedom calls her a "traitor."

The San Francisco-born skier isn’t new to the Olympics, and neither are questions about the country she competes for.

WASHINGTON — Three-time Olympic medalist Eileen Gu is back for the Milan Cortana Winter Games, and once again she is representing China instead of the United States — the country where she was born.

China's Eileen Gu, born in the United States, is a three-time Olympic medalist and is going for more at the 2026 Winter Games in Milano Cortina.

BEIJING | Xinhua | As the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics opened Friday night, 15-year-old Chen Keyu, a rising star on China’s national ice hockey team, sat glued to her screen in Shenzhen, tracking every shift of the hockey competitions in Italy.

Snowboarding always gets a lot of attention stateside, and China’s Su Yiming is the king of a big air. Su won gold at the 2022 games with an 1800, and since then he’s become the first athlete to land a 198o-spin during competition. There’s a chance he can go even bigger at Milan.

Mathilde Gremaud successfully defended her Olympic freeski slopestyle title and denied Eileen Gu a gold medal for a second straight Winter Games.

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — A generation ago, the sight of an Olympic halfpipe podium drenched in red, white and blue was as common as fresh powder on the mountain — a fitting and expected celebration for a sport born and raised in the United States.

While the U.S. is on top of the overall Olympic medal count, it is not the country that dominates winter sports like the 2026 Milano Cortina Games in Italy.