Weibo suspended 93 accounts and deleted 300 posts after Zhu Yi crashed into a wall during the figure skating team event.
had vastly different reactions this week to their performances at the games, as the country celebrated freestyle skier Eileen Gu's gold medal win while figure skater Zhu Yi faced backlash on Chinese social media over her poor showing.
American-born Olympian Gu placed first during her big air competition, which led to Chinese social media site Weibo being overwhelmed. The popular platform's servers were temporarily overloaded as Gu became half of the top 10 trending topics following her big win, the Associated Press reported. "Gu Ailing is a genius young woman right?" was a trending topic that referenced her Chinese name, AP reported. "Dad was Harvard, Mom was Peking University, Stanford, Grandmother was an athlete. She's beautiful and classy," said one post, which was seen about 86,000 times. The reaction was much different for another U.S. athlete who competed for China after giving up her U.S. citizenship to do so. Zhu was under attack on social media following her performance in the team figure skating competition. In the short program, Zhu crashed into the wall, and she placed last in the free skate program after she had several falls and broke down in tears. Her performance knocked China out of the bronze medal position, and the team ultimately finished fifth. The Russian team won the event, with the U.S. taking silver and Japan winning the bronze. "I'm upset and a little embarrassed," Zhu said after her performance according to Reuters."I guess I felt a lot of pressure because I know everybody in China was pretty surprised with the selection for ladies' singles and I just really wanted to show them what I was able to do but unfortunately I didn't." Users on Weibo didn't hold back on their disappointment with Zhu's performance. The hashtag #ZhuYiFellOver had 230 million views before being deactivated. Another hashtag, #ZhuYiMessedUp, remains active with over 80 million views, France 24 reported."Zhu Yi, how ridiculous your performance is!" another user said, according toWeibo ended up suspending at least 93 accounts and deleted 300 posts about Zhu containing vicious comments, the AP reported. Zhu told the Xinhua News Agency Monday she felt pressure reading the harsh comments on Chinese social media. "I wanted to prove myself because I didn't do so well yesterday and what everyone said on the internet really affected me," she said."I have trained very hard. The problem now is psychological. I will try not to be affected by the outside world." Two American-born athletes competing for China received radically different reactions from Chinese social media to their performances at the Winter Olympics. Above, Zhu Yi reacts after competing in the women's single skating free skating of the figure skating team event Monday.
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