MILAN — Alysa Liu was skating on the rink at Assago Ice Skating Arena just before the biggest routine of her life when she spotted her teammate Amber Glenn kissing and crying next to the couch. Glenn was devastated after Tuesday night’s show, having performed her own spectacular skate routine about two hours earlier. As Liu approached, she gave Glenn a thumbs up in congratulations.
“What are you doing?” Glenn replied angrily. “Go skating!”
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So Alyssa Liu did this. She smiled all the way and earned herself a gold medal.
There are no record books to measure these things, but it’s entirely possible that no Olympian ever smiled as much as Liu did Thursday night when she performed a brilliant, nearly flawless free skate that vaulted her from third to first. She smiled when she stepped on the ice, she smiled when she saw Glen, she smiled through her lutz, loops and saljos, and she smiled when she ended her routine by pointing her left hand to the sky. She smiled and let out a triumphant laugh as she slid in front of the camera on the sidelines and yelled, “That’s what I fucking said!”
That’s all the fun Alysa Liu experienced — giddy, confident, joyful, calm — and the talent to win a gold medal. At the Olympics, many people crumble under pressure, but she smiled in the face of it.
“She’s different than us,” her coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said, smiling in the afterglow of victory. “Others of us here would say, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous. I can’t do this. I’ve got a million voices in my head.'” A voice in her head said, ‘I get it.’ ‘”
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“The feeling I felt out there was calm, happy, confident,” she said after coming off the ice, pausing between each word. “Of course I had fun. But I was having fun the whole time.”
Alyssa Liu won her second gold medal at the Cortina Olympics in Milan on Thursday and celebrated in her own way.
(Reuters/Reuters)
Her story remains a remarkable one: From 2016 to 2020, she won titles at the intermediate, junior and national levels, she made the 2022 Olympic team…and then she decided she didn’t want to skate anymore. Totally, completely, closed door done. She enrolled in classes at UCLA, she spent time with friends, she traveled the world…all parts of normal life that competitive figure skaters don’t get.
Somewhere along the way, however, she decided to return to skating, believing it was the best way for her to express her rich ideas in the fields, away from the ice. Get her talking about music, fashion, or choreography, and she’s likely to be ecstatic about her latest inspiration or creation.
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“I think I have a beautiful life story and I feel very lucky,” Liu said. “I’m just glad that a lot of people are following me now so I can show them everything that’s going on in my head.”
Liu rediscovered her love for skating, and skating fell back in love with her. She quickly went from retirement to world champion and now Olympic gold medalist — the first American woman to win an individual gold since 2002.
“I 100 percent believe that if she hadn’t left, she wouldn’t be here right now,” DiGuglielmo said. “Give her a break – not just walk away, she close the door – her body gets healthier, her mind… gets stimulated, and all of those things make you who you are.”
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What’s most striking about Liu: As an Olympian, she has no worries about the Games themselves. She envisioned something bigger, something beyond the Olympic stage, which is truly an achievement considering she’s still only 20 years old.
“I don’t need this,” she said, holding up her gold medal. “What I needed was a stage. I got it. So no matter what happened, I was good. If I fell every time I jumped,” she said with a smile, “I would still be wearing this dress.”
One day, a few Winter Olympics away, we may look back on Liu’s performance in 2026 as the beginning of a renewed interest in figure skating, just as Dorothy Hamill inspired thousands of young skaters after her gold medal in 1976. Even if not, we will still have the real memory of a perfect night on the ice.
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“When you love doing something, you can excel at it,” DiGuglielmo said. “She can really prove that you can do what you love, do it well and win the Olympics.”
With the medal hanging around his neck and his skates replaced by sneakers, Liu paused and thought about it. “I feel so connected to the audience,” she says, then laughs. “Oh! I want to go there again!”