NEWNow you can listen to Pak Gazette articles!
Move over Eileen Gu, there’s a new California-born Chinese-American Winter Olympic gold medalist Instagram queen. And this represents red, white and blue.
Team USA’s Alysa Liu reached 5.3 million followers on Instagram on Tuesday, just a week after winning the country’s first individual Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating in 24 years.
Liu instantly became a global sensation and fan favorite among loyal Team USA fans of all backgrounds and beliefs.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON PakGazette.Com
Gold medalist Alysa Liu of the United States shows off her medal after competing in the women’s free skate in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Before the start of the Olympics, Liu had fewer than 300,000 followers on Instagram. But her performance in the women’s final propelled her to global stardom, arguably the biggest story of all of this year’s Winter Games.
Meanwhile, Gu, a ski star who competes for Team China despite being born and raised in the United States, won one gold and two silver medals. This brought her Olympic medal total to six with three golds, making her the most decorated free skier in the history of the sport.
However, Gu now falls far behind Liu in terms of Instagram followers with just 3.7 million. Liu is on track to potentially double that number.
Before the start of the Olympics, Gu had more than 2.1 million followers, so he saw an increase. But it can’t compare to the meteoric rise of Liu, who is one of the most rising figures in all of sports right now.
Even Gu herself got involved in the hype about Liu. Gu commented on Liu’s post celebrating the gold medal, cheering her on.
“YESSSSS,” Gu wrote in the comments section.
The two Chinese-American stars have been relentlessly compared and contrasted on social media. these Olympic Games.
Both athletes are children of immigrants who came to the United States from China. But many fans and critics were quick to point out the contrast between Liu’s story, a story of American loyalty told by the son of an immigrant, and Gu, who chose to compete for China’s team when he was 15 despite living. in california.
Arthur Liu raised Alysa and her siblings in Oakland. Yan Gu raised Eileen across the San Francisco Bay.
Their paths separated in 2019.
The Chinese government launched a program to recruit foreign-born athletes, primarily of Chinese descent, to boost competitiveness, particularly for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and soccer, according to The Chinese project.
Gu and Liu were the main recruiting targets.
Gu changed his red, white, and blue to red and gold. Just months after competing in his first freestyle skiing World Cup for the U.S. in January 2019, he competed for China for the first time in June of that year after requesting a change of nation with the International Ski Federation.
The Lius remained loyal to Team USA.
FBI Agent Alysa Liu, Chinese Military (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images, Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Arthur was reportedly “not open to persuasion” for Alysa to run for China, according to The economist.
Liu and her family then found themselves in the crosshairs of China’s government ahead of the 2022 Beijing Games amid her father’s past and her own refusal to compete for China.
Before her appearance at the Beijing 2022 games, she and her father were alleged targets of a spy operation by the Chinese government.
Liu called the experience “a little strange and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so… unbelievable. You know what I mean, that’s crazy,” Liu previously told Pak Gazette Digital in a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.
“Imagine finding out that at such a young age. I mean, in a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like on some prank show?’ Is this world real? I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, because of everything my father did in his activist days.”
Both athletes then competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu representing China and Liu representing the US.
Gu won two gold medals and one silver in freeskiing and returned home to California a new global name for his success.
Liu finished in sixth place in women’s singles figure skating, then temporarily retired early, before returning to the sport in 2024.
Now, after a successful 2026, Liu has become the most popular figure among the Western world, especially among Americans and, in particular, among conservatives.
Many high-profile conservative influencers on social media heaped praise on Liu for bringing historic gold to the US, including Megyn Kelly, Clay Travis, Dave Portnoy and others.
Gu broke down in tears after winning gold in the women’s halfpipe final on Sunday and revealed that her grandmother had died before the competition.
He concluded an Olympic Games in which he had to compete under the pressure of immense global scrutiny in response to his decision to compete for China seven years ago.
Gu was asked if she It feels like a little “A punching bag for a certain current of American politics.”
“Yes,” he said, according to USA Today. “A lot of athletes compete for a different country… People just have a problem with them doing it because they lump China into this monolithic entity, and they just I hate China. So it’s not really about what they think it’s about.
“And also because I win. If I wasn’t doing well, I think they probably wouldn’t care as much, and that’s fine with me. People have a right to their opinions.”
Related article
