A new University of Michigan study finds U.S. media celebrated snowboarder Chloe Kim while vilifying skier Eileen Gu, revealing how Asian American athletes’ belonging is treated as conditional. Researchers say the coverage shows how sports media helps decide who is seen as truly American.
When Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu burst onto the Olympic stage, both were hailed as teenage phenoms with dazzling skills and immigrant family stories. But a new University of Michigan study finds U.S. media treated the two Asian American stars in sharply different ways — and, in the process, turned their Olympic choices into a test of national loyalty.
Kim, a Southern California–raised snowboarder and daughter of Korean immigrants, was widely praised for competing for the United States at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Gu, a freestyle skier from San Francisco with a Chinese immigrant mother and white American father, became one of the faces of the 2022 Beijing Games after choosing to represent China.
The researchers found that those decisions shaped how mainstream outlets defined their identities and their place in America.
The study, published in the journal Communication & Sport, analyzed more than 200 English-language newspaper articles around each of the last two Winter Olympics. From more than 600 initial news sources, the team narrowed its sample to 116 reports on Kim and 106 on Gu, then examined how the athletes were described and what narratives emerged about their nationality and belonging.
The authors, led by Doo Jae Park, a lecturer in sport management at the U-M School of Kinesiology and a faculty affiliate in Asian/Pacific Islander American studies, argue that sports coverage did more than describe events. It helped define who is seen as fully American — and who is not.
Kim was frequently framed as a “typical American teenager” and an “All-American teenager,” celebrated as the embodiment of the American dream. She had turned down an invitation to join South Korea’s national team and instead chose to ride for the United States, a decision that media outlets highlighted as proof of her patriotism and loyalty.
Gu, by contrast, was often cast as an “outsider,” criticized for choosing China over the United States and portrayed as an “ungrateful traitor” who supposedly valued money and fame over allegiance to her birth country. Coverage frequently suggested she needed to “pick a side,” with that phrase repeated across outlets as a shorthand for a larger debate about nationalism, geopolitics and identity.
Park and his co-authors describe this pattern as “conditional belonging” — the idea that Asian Americans’ status as Americans is treated as contingent on their perceived loyalty to the United States. In their reading, Kim was positioned as an “insider,” whose choice aligned with U.S. interests, while Gu was treated as a threat for aligning with a geopolitical rival.
Yet the study argues that both athletes were ultimately subject to the same underlying logic: their acceptance depended on how well they fit into a narrow vision of who is “allowed” to be American.
One key theme the researchers identified was the persistence of the “model minority” myth. Coverage of both Kim and Gu often shifted away from their athletic achievements to emphasize elite academic credentials and high test scores, as well as their parents’ immigrant sacrifices and intense support.
Stories highlighted Kim’s connection to Princeton and Gu’s admission to Stanford, reinforcing a familiar narrative that Asian Americans earn their place through exceptional performance and hard work. While this framing can appear positive on the surface, scholars have long argued that it flattens Asian American experiences, masks discrimination and is used to contrast them with other racial groups.
The study also underscores how fragile acceptance can be, even for someone portrayed as an “insider.” Despite her Olympic glory, Kim faced a wave of racism and bullying during the COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-Asian hate crimes surged across the United States.
“Despite the fact that Chloe Kim is an American citizen, she had to worry about hate crimes because of her appearance and her Asian identity,” Park said in a news release. “It is a sad realization that the history of Asian racialization is repeating over and over.”
For Park and his colleagues, that history includes the long-standing “perpetual foreigner” stereotype, in which Asian Americans are treated as outsiders regardless of how many generations their families have lived in the United States. The study argues that as long as this trope persists, even the most successful Asian American athletes will continue to be seen as conditionally American.
The researchers also point to a gap in the broader field of sport studies. Much scholarship, they note, has focused on a Black-white racial binary, which can obscure the distinct experiences of Asian Americans and other communities. When that happens, they argue, Asian Americans are effectively pushed to the margins or “others” in discussions about race, power and representation in sports.
Park says changing that requires rethinking who is centered in both media narratives and academic research.
“We need to diversify and redesign the racial paradigm … so that we can include Asians, Asian Americans and other minoritized populations,” he said. “At the end of the day, we can make sports studies diverse, inclusive and accessible to all people.”
The authors hope their work will encourage journalists, fans and scholars to look more critically at how they talk about athletes’ identities, especially when international politics are involved. They suggest that media outlets can play a constructive role by avoiding loaded labels, questioning assumptions about loyalty and belonging, and including more voices from the Asian diaspora in their coverage.
As Kim and Gu continue their careers, the study raises a broader question for the sports world and beyond: Will Asian American athletes be recognized as fully American on their own terms, or only as long as they pass an unwritten loyalty test?
Source: University of Michigan