Making her Olympic debut for Team China, California-born figure skater Zhu Yi was eager to prove herself to the Chinese public. Instead, the 19-year-old is facing a firestorm on Chinese social media after she fell flat on the ice and finished last in the women's short program team event Sunday. On Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, the hashtag "Zhu Yi has fallen" gained 200 million views in just a few hours. Many questioned why Zhu, an American-born skater, was picked to represent China at the expense of an athlete born in the country.
"This is such a disgrace," said a comment with 11,000 upvotes.
By Sunday evening, the hashtag appeared to have been censored. It is unclear why. Zhu was the first to compete on the second day of the figure skating team event, gliding into the ice rink to loud cheers from the mostly Chinese crowd at Beijing's Capital Indoor Stadium. But she tumbled and crashed into the wall after a failed jump in the opening combination, and missed another jump later in the program, finishing with the lowest score of the event.
