Alysa Liu is one of the most unique figure skaters of her generation. She has not followed the path that most Olympic skaters would take. In her most recent performance at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Alysa showed how much she has grown as a skater and a person. Her performance reflected the fact that she was not under the same pressure to be perfect. In interviews, Alysa talked about how different the 2026 Olympics felt compared to 2022. Now she says that she feels more comfortable with who she is and she wants her skating to show her personality. She explained that this time she was really skating for herself, not just for a medal.
She made history 13 years old as the youngest U.S. women’s national figure skating champion and then won again in 2014. After winning back-to-back titles, she becomes the great American hope in U.S. women’s figure skating because they had not won a medal in over 20 years. After the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Alysa decided to retire at age 16 which shocked many fans. After she performed in 2022, she decided that she needed a break from skating. She had been skating almost her whole life up till that point and she wanted to experience a normal teenage life. During her time aways from the ice, she started college at UCLA and experienced things she missed out on because of training and competitions.
Eventually, she realized that she missed skating. When she decided to come back her coach did not believe her at first and even tried to talk her out of it. Alysa was determined to come back to the ice and convinced her coach to give her another chance. She was adamant on the fact that she was going to be in charge of her come back. She got to pick her own music, costumes and overall creative control. Alysa stated that she did not care if she got a medal, she just wanted to show people, and herself that she could do. Her performance in Millon Italy was nearly perfect with a total score of 226.79 which secured her a gold medal. Watching her performance, you could tell how happy she was to be skating again without a ton of pressure on her shoulders.
