Alysa Liu released the pressure, reclaimed her joy and turned it into Olympic gold | Alysa Liu
ALysa Liu made her way through a mixed zone teeming with hundreds of journalists Friday morning at a quarter past midnight, an Olympic gold medal around her neck, the sequins of her color-coordinated dress sparkling under the Klieg lights and the crush of television cameras. The 20-year-old from West Oakland had just become the first American to win figure skating’s biggest prize in 24 years, landing seven flawless triples to edge two Japanese rivals out of third place after Tuesday’s short program and win in her sport’s most rarefied air. But to hear Liu tell it, her second gold in 12 days was just a passing note in a Milan fortnight she doesn’t want to finish.
Liu’s carefree spirit should and will be studied in the weeks, months and years following these Olympics – especially these The Olympics – as a counterpoint to the results-obsessed mentalities that have shattered the mental well-being of so many athletes thrust into the pressure cooker of the world’s biggest sporting event. She spoke candidly and insightfully about how her unique journey from child prodigy to burnout to second-act skater led to an indifference to scores or rankings. All she ultimately wanted was a chance to be part of Team USA and share her artistry on the world stage.
Just a few meters away stood Kaori Sakamoto, the silver medalist and one of the most joyful people to ever skate on Olympic ice, wiping away a steady stream of tears with a crumpled tissue, brought on by the cold arithmetic and brutal calculation of this unforgiving sport. The 25-year-old from Kobe, who is retiring after this season, won a stunning bronze medal four years ago at the Beijing Olympics, only for a clear favorite who had never lost a competition at senior level to collapse in a free skate. She had backed up this breakthrough with a series of three world championships over the next few years. But some slight errors Friday night — a wobbly landing on a triple flip, a missed triple dive in a combination — left her short of Liu’s marker and lamenting the storybook ending that could have been. Sometimes third can feel like first. Other times, the second may look like nothing at all.
Liu’s journey since Beijing, where she finished sixth in her Olympic debut, has been different. She had disappeared from the sport just months after the 2022 Games, citing mental fatigue, making it Instagram official before anyone could talk her out of it. She started school at UCLA and studied psychology. She went hiking in the Himalayas with friends. She found herself outside of a sport she had felt locked into since winning the U.S. national championships at age 13, when her 4-foot-6 frame left her too small to reach the top step of the podium without help from other medalists.
“I really hated skating when I stopped. I really didn’t like it,” Liu said in the run-up to Milan. “I didn’t care about the competitions. I didn’t care about the venues. I didn’t care about the skaters. I didn’t care about my programs. I just wanted to escape. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I hated fame. I hated social media. I didn’t like interviews. I hated all of that.”
But a chance reconnection with her love of movement while hurtling down the mountain on a ski trip to Lake Tahoe brought her back to the ice. At first, gradually, once a week, in public sessions at the Toyota Sports Performance Center in El Segundo, where she found that the complex jumps that had propelled her rise had not completely abandoned her. Over time, she rediscovered her love for skating, not as a competitive activity but as a source of personal expression. She quickly set her sights on a return, but only under certain conditions. Her father, Arthur, who had invested untold sums into making his daughter the next Michelle Kwan, another Chinese-American skating icon from California, would no longer be on the team. She would be the CEO of Alysa Liu Inc, having final say over everything from her costumes to her music to her diet and workout regimen. More importantly, the results wouldn’t matter.
Enter Alysa 2.0 – a term she doesn’t like, but an accurate shorthand for the complete reinvention of a skater on her own terms. Sporting an eye-catching frenulum piercing and a bleached ring hairdo that took years to cultivate, she embraced a nonconformist streak that made her the darling of foreigners around the world. But the transformation goes much deeper than aesthetics.
“Protecting my identity is my main goal,” she said Thursday. “I know exactly what it’s like to not have that. My previous experience has taught me how I should protect myself. I don’t go online much. I spend time with my friends and family as much as possible. Being grounded is really what keeps me going. I like to explore other hobbies, do side quests and such. It keeps me curious and I protect it.”
Liu first signaled that her comeback was real at last year’s World Championships in Boston, when she became the first American woman to win figure skating’s biggest competition outside the Olympics since Kimmie Meissner in 2006. The bumps in the road since then have ranged from the prosaic to the macabre. There were headaches related to music rights. There were clothing issues. Her short musical program planned for the Olympic season was scrapped after the artist was found at the center of a police death investigation after the remains of a teenage girl were discovered in the trunk of her impounded car. (Regular figure skating stuff.)
According to Phillip DiGuglielmo, Olympic gold was a “kind of taboo” topic and didn’t enter the open conversation until November. One half of the thrice-fired, thrice-rehired coaching duo — along with Massimo Scali — who has been with Liu since the beginning and helped bring her to the promised land of figure skating, DiGuglielmo reflected on how Liu’s reframed expectations have rubbed off on the team. For example, to manage stress before Thursday’s free skate, you had to drink two glasses of Pol Roger champagne before going to the ice rink.
“We did a little thing before the celebration, as we learned from her,” he said. “Third or fourth place would still have been an incredible accomplishment. I can’t sit here and say that it has earn. This does not correspond to his values. And as a coach, you must amplify the athlete’s values.
He added: “Her goal was to show her art. We get a lot of criticism. Pretty hair, pretty dresses and glitter. It’s a sport. It’s a hard sport. It’s a split-second timing sport. You get a little bit of adrenaline and it changes your timing. Her internal clock is just ticking. Her goal was just to make the Olympic team. That was really the big deal for her.”
DiGuglielmo, who was initially skeptical of the return and tried to talk him out of it, had stood by Liu throughout his dizzying and unsatisfying first chapter, giving him a unique perspective on the journey he’s taken.
“When she was younger, she has no memory of the places she went or the competitions she competed in,” he said. “She was so unhappy that she ended up compartmentalizing. She doesn’t remember going to the Junior World Championships, or going to the Junior Grand Prix Final. She doesn’t remember any of that. So last year’s slogan wlike creating memories. So if we are in Japan, we eat ramen. We wanted to say, “Here we are, this is what we’re doing.” »
That odyssey culminated Thursday night, when an arena once ruled by Whitney Houston and Lady Gaga gave birth to a new American original, an outcome unthinkable two years ago when Liu was off the grid roaming the trails around Mount Everest with skating firmly in the rear view. Liu is now the reigning world and Olympic champion, returning from Italy after Saturday’s exhibition gala with two gold medals following last week’s team event as the face of American figure skating, if not the sport itself. But more importantly, it provided proof that joy, not pressure, can cut more.
“My story is more important than anything to me, and that’s what’s close to my heart,” Liu said. “This journey has been incredible. I have no complaints and I’m very grateful for everything. This is how my life has been. Everything in general has led me to this point.”
