Who Is Alysa Liu?
If you’re a figure skating fan, or just a casual watcher of Team USA’s athletic endeavors, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen 20-year-old Alysa Liu sweeping the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics by storm. The ball of sunshine decorated in a recognizable string of halo dyes, sharp eyeliner and a bold smiley piercing is a force to be reckoned with on competitive ice. A main reason for all the attention swarming around Liu is not just because of her skill, but the fact that this is not her first time on such a high-level stage.
Alysa Liu’s story is a whirlwind of success, emotion and inspiration, with her breakthrough onto the scene being her taking the title of U.S. National Champion in 2019, at just thirteen years old. The youngest Women’s Champion ever, the pressure was on, and she didn’t bend. Continuing her run, she refused to be dethroned, taking the title again at 14 in 2020, and went straight into the World Juniors, taking home a bronze medal for her efforts.
Liu made her Olympic debut at just sixteen years old in Beijing, 2022, finishing in sixth place in singles position, and didn’t stop there, taking one last trip to the Montpellier World Championships to score another bronze medal. The real twist came after this competition, when, in a heartfelt Instagram post, Alysa announced her retirement from the sport, her reasoning including wanting to live a normal life. For a while, that was a wrap on an eleven-year career. The American ice princess had returned to her education, hanging up her skates until 2024, when a random trip back to the ice rink ignited the same passion skating had always caused to flow through her.
Alysa’s retirement Instagram post has since been archived, as she revealed her comeback to ice skating in March of 2024. Her comeback statements across interviews announced that she would be taking full control of her skating career from now on, from her program music choices all the way to her diet. She would be calling the shots, and if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t skate. Her coaches agreed, and Alysa Liu stepped back onto competitive ice just one year later, at the World Championships in March 2025, placing first, as if she never left. Qualifying for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Alysa’s comeback was making headlines, as she earned a gold medal with the rest of Team USA’s selected skaters, and ended her second Olympic appearance with another gold medal, the first American woman to win the individual gold since 2002.
The success of Alysa Liu has carried over a course of what is now nearing 13 years of skating, but the difference is her attitude. Liu has come back with nothing but a smile on her face and a love for the sport, and it shows in each program and performance she puts together.
My Own Experience
Despite having never competed on a level as high as Alysa Liu’s, her story still deeply resonates with me, as an athlete who spent a long time in their sport. I began swimming summer league at just seven years old, our team was too small to even compete in more than mock meets. Beginning an official season the following year, at age eight, I spent the next nine years of my life swimming competitively across a variety of summer league, year-round, and high school competitions.
Though the pressure on me was never as serious, the expectation to perform was always there. Swimming is an individual sport that you never participate in alone, and there is always an aspect of comparison among a team, whether it’s conscious or not. The desire to be good at something, the urge to stand out somewhere, was strong, but as I progressed through the years, the spark that competing once set ablaze in me faded out. Showing up to practices felt like an obligation, tears leaked into my goggles more than chlorinated liquid did, and competition felt like a drag every time I had to be there.
Even with the two regional medals and four all-conference awards hanging on my wall, there was no motivation, and specifically, no joy. I wrapped up my final swimming season in April of 2024 and hung up my cap and suit that very same weekend, swearing I had no intention of returning to the sport. A deep passion for coaching flowed within me, a way to share the sport that had once been a large part of my personality, and as a full-circle moment, I accepted a head coaching position at age eighteen with the same summer league team I’d grown up on. I barely competed during my last year of eligibility, swimming just enough to qualify for the summer league championships, for no other reason than to say I completed ten years of swimming, and after that, goodbye to it all.
After being seeded 7th out of 8th in my heat, my only goal going into it was not to be last place. The cold water sent a shockwave through my system the second I dove in, but it did nothing to quell the re-ignited fire slowly curling in my mind as I raced, finishing 1st in my heat, with a full two-second drop off of my entry time. Similar to Alysa’s first step on the ice rink after her retirement, my one and only swim that day evoked an emotional passion for swimming that I hadn’t felt in years, a stunned swear falling from my lips after reading the result lit up on the scoreboard. I walked over to my family afterwards, a wide smile on my face as words along the lines of “Way to finish out with a bang, right?” slipped out, but a text to a friend shortly after told a completely different story.
“I think I’m going to go back to swimming.”
I stepped back into my club practices much like Alysa stepped back into her coaching sessions, no expectations, no real plan, just figuring out where we were now with skills. Practicing was lighthearted, sets thrown together as I went, refusing to put any pressure on myself to perform at any sort of rate. I was there for enjoyment and to hopefully succeed along the way, but it wasn’t the forefront of my purpose anymore. In my first club meet back, I continued to drop time off of my events, and the unbridled happiness that ran through me as I caught my breath after each race was enough to convince me that I had returned for the right reasons.
My change in attitude towards my sport has truly laid down the foundation for my new peak in it, because my practice routines have only slowed down since my old competitions. I practice less, and only when I feel like it, but when I do, I put my whole heart and soul into the pool, and it shows in my performance.
Alysa Liu’s ability to display this kind of unconventional career on such a wide platform and huge stage is so important for athletes to see. It showcases a journey full of resilience and self-care, and serves as a crucial message to anyone doubting whether or not they should step back.
Do it for yourself, your enjoyment, and nobody else’s. You’ll see personal growth in an unimaginable way.