The Winter Olympics that took place from the 6th to the 22nd of February this year was not only a feat of athletic prowess on a global scale, but also a cultural phenomenon as so many Olympics before it. Whether that be the US Women’s hockey team’s sweeping dominance throughout the tournament, or Mikaela Shiffrin’s gold medal run, the Olympics is one of the only times I (as an American abroad) feel truly patriotic. It removes most of the political discourse that has never been more present in America’s influence both abroad and at home, and centers the hard work of athletes who have worked their whole lives for that moment.
Almost everyone has played a sport at some point in their life, whether that is recreational football, high school tennis, or competitive swimming. From our limited athletic experience, we can all begin to imagine what it truly takes to be the best. All Olympic athletes are truly extraordinary; the sacrifice and commitment required is something the average viewer on the couch could never understand. However, perhaps the shining star of this winter Olympics, both in results and cultural impact, is the one and only Alysa Liu.
LIU’S COMPETITIVE HISTORY & REtirement
Alysa Liu is not a new figure in women’s figure skating. At 13, she became the youngest ever U.S. women’s national champion, as well as the first woman to complete a quadruple jump and a triple axel in the same program. However, Liu’s presence at the previous Winter Olympics in 2022 was overshadowed by the headline drama in women’s figure skating of a doping scandal involving the Russian team.
Going into the 2022 Olympics, the women’s figure skating medals had practically already been decided from a technical standpoint, with not one but three Russian women dominating global competition for the years prior and into the Olympic year. They had something Liu did not, that being quadruple jumps. In 2022, Liu did not attempt the triple axel in her short program, and did make the jump in her free, however, with a downgrade by the technical panel. Women’s figure skating at that time had become a jumping competition, with a generation of Russian skaters performing elements that were believed impossible, making any podium campaigns from other skaters near impossible.
Even with one Kamila Valieva facing incredible backlash for a positive doping test, with the team event results that she contributed to being voided. She was fifteen years old. Although Valieva went on to skate, it was her two other teammates who took silver and gold in dramatic fashion, with skater Alexandra Trusova getting silver to her teammate despite her five quadruple jumps in her free skate. All of that to say, the 2022 Olympics was never going to be a success for women’s figure skating, with the technical elements so unbalanced that a victory for even an athlete of the calibre of Liu was never possible.
Despite facing technical competition from Russian competitors and repeated attempts to achieve victory at Olympic levels, ice skating was far from a goal or even a passion for Liu in 2022. In a shock move after the world championships following the 2022 Olympics, in which she received bronze, Liu announced her retirement at sixteen in a now deleted Instagram post. Not only was the retirement a shock, but the beginning of Liu’s life on her terms.
Redefinition
Liu began ice skating at five years old, entered into the sport by her dad Arthur Liu who immigrated from China after the Tiananmen Square protests. In a 60 Minutes interview published on YouTube in January 2026, Liu described, “I skated every day when I was thirteen, fourteen, it was a very abnormal childhood”. She was then asked if her father was involved in her business because of the training at such a young age, Liu responded, “oh yeah, it was basically his business, it wasn’t even really mine”.
Many elite athletes face this sort of pressure, particularly when specializing in a sport from an early age, as parents often make decisions that kids aren’t even able to comprehend. Everything changed for Liu in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. Liu describes that time off “was something completely foreign to me. And then through that, it was also like, ‘Oh, I can eat!’ I’m eating something I’ve never been able to eat without getting in trouble before.” Although it took until after her Olympic run to officially pull the plug, at 16 Liu decided to put her career on hold and live her life.
Often in American culture, the elusive idea of the American dream constantly promotes the narrative that working hard without breaks is the only way to success. What Liu chose to do was not only unprecedented in a sporting context, with most elite athletes at the figure skating level needing to retire due to career ending injuries as they age, but also foreign within the American mindset.
Recall back to Simone Biles, who after deciding to pull out of the 2020/2021 Olympics due to mental issues surrounding performance, was ridiculed online for “quitting” her country despite the fact that she may have jeopardized her life or athletic career. Such is the harsh reality of the work ethic required for the elusive ‘American dream’, however, how such a dream of success can be achieved while ignoring one’s own wellbeing is another question entirely.
Liu took the opposite approach. Instead of “sucking it up” and continuing in a sport she had lost her passion for, she not only began to focus on going to college, but went to Nepal and trekked to Everest base camp. Liu also began prioritizing time with friends and undertaking long road trips across the United States. After a ski holiday with friends, she picked up a pair of skates again, not aiming to pursue the sport again but instead looking for the sort of dopamine hit she hadn’t found since leaving the rink.
Self definiton & Returning to the ice
What Liu did next was the unthinkable, deciding to return to the competitive circuit but this time as an adult. Not only had her time off from the sport been extensive for a figure skater, but the precedent set in the last two Olympic cycles had been that of the hardest jumps producing the gold medal, with athletes attempting to preserve prepubescent bodies in order to be able to make such jumps. Being thin and ‘light’ was viewed as the only way to attain these jump combinations, particularly triples and quadruple jumps, hence the young age of the Russian skaters competing at both the 2018 and 2022 winter Olympics. Liu was no longer the 4 foot 7 inches she was when she had begun her skating career, no longer a teenager, a child.
Such was the unprecedented nature of a successful comeback into figure skating that Liu’s coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, attempted for two hours to convince her why she shouldn’t return to the ice. But against all odds, and her coach’s advice, Liu convinced him to join her team for her comeback. But she had stipulations. “I get to pick my own program music, I get to help with the creative process of the program, if I feel like I’m skating too much I’ll back down, if I feel like I’m not skating enough I’ll ramp it up. No one is going to starve me, tell me what I can and can’t eat”. Thus began a comeback story that should’ve been impossible to begin with.
With a lack of consistent senior athletes and Russian athletes banned from the international circuit, a shift began to exist in figure skating, difficult to quantify but nonetheless noticeable. With no woman jumping quadruple jumps, artistic capability became increasingly important as the field had almost leveled in terms of skill.
And then there was Liu. Although she didn’t have the technical elements she possessed at thirteen, her artistic components and jumps quickly returned. Her coach and coreographer both emphatically stated in the 60 Minutes interview that she was in fact a better skater upon her return.
But this was no mistake. Liu had ensured that her training would be her own, even if that meant cutting her own father out of her team. When explaining her reasoning, she stated, “he’s a great father you know, I just didn’t want him to be as invested in it as he was before”. 60 Minutes additionally asked her father, Arthur Liu, if his exclusion stung. He responded, “a little bit, a little bit. It’s like, I brought you up to two US National titles”.
Liu’s quest to self-define within the figure skating world was ultimately about artistic expression as well. When asked if she views herself as an athlete or an artist, Liu responded “An artist actually. I view competitions more as a stage for performing”. One of her ultimately gold-winning programs was to Promise by Laufey, a song which she described as “perfect for my figure skating story too, I have to skate to it, it moves me”. This, ultimately, was what allowed Liu to not only storm to gold, but to do so with a smile on her face.
Gold wasn’t the goal
But it was never about gold, a sentiment echoed by Liu throughout the whole Olympics. It was, for her, about the performance, the joy that she had found through rediscovering the sport on her own terms. Gold just happened along the way, an after effect of Liu prioritizing herself. Without a step back from the sport, a true break and chance to rediscover herself, we might have never seen the Alysa Liu that captivated so many this Olympic cycle. Brimming with joy, enthusiasm, and an overall carefree attitude towards performing on the world’s biggest stage.
It is no wonder that she has caught on in the cultural consciousness, but while some view her story as the epitome of the American dream, working hard to achieve the highest honor in all of sport, I would argue it is in fact the opposite. Liu’s success is a testament to setting boundaries, allowing for reorientation, rediscovery, and ultimately a coincidental success along the way. When I say ‘coincidental’, that is not an insult to Liu or her work, but for example if Amber Glenn hadn’t missed one of her combinations, it easily could’ve been another American woman on the podium.
And gold, after all, was never the point for Liu. “I would’ve been fine either way. I would’ve been loving life outside of skating just as much. But yeah, I’m really happy with how my life is right now”. Even though she ended up walking away with gold, that achievement to me isn’t nearly as impressive as what it took for her to reach that point. To have the guts to quit, to walk away from something you have made your life, and rediscover not only yourself but what you want as a person is something the American dream notably leaves out of its narrative. And what is Alysa Liu if not an example of how very valuable reorientation and rediscovery can be?