Alysa Liu looks to end 24-year US medal drought, within 2 points of lead heading into free skate
MILAN — Alysa Liu will try to end a 24-year drought for American women in Olympic figure skating on Thursday night when the “Blade Angel” attempts to chase down Japanese rivals Ami Nakai and Kaori Sakamoto in the free skate at the Milan Cortina Games.
The 20-year-old Liu scored 76.59 points for an impeccable short program on Tuesday night, leaving the freethinking native of the San Francisco Bay area just over two points behind Nakai and less than a point back of Sakamoto in the individual competition.
The U.S. has not had a woman stand atop an Olympic podium since Sarah Hughes at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
Asked whether Liu thinks she can upstage Nakai and Sakamoto, she replied: “I don’t think about stuff like that. Whether I beat them or not is not my goal. My goal is just to do my programs and share my story and I don’t need to be over or under anyone to do that.”
It is exactly that kind of attitude that has allowed Liu to succeed in a comeback from a two-year retirement.
The youngest figure skater ever to win the U.S. championship, when she triumphed in 2019 at the age of 13, Liu seemed destined for stardom. She could hit the big triple axels that only the best women in the world could pull off, and her grace and skill had placed her in the line of succession behind the likes of Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and other great American skaters.
She qualified for the Beijing Games at the age of 16, finishing sixth — and then she quit.
What all those people neatly categorizing her as the next U.S. star didn’t realize was that she was burned out. Liu had spent most of her childhood in rinks, her father dropping her off in the mornings and picking her up at night. Later, she would move to Colorado to focus on her training, and her life revolved around a dorm room, school work and practices.
“The rink was my home for far too long,” Liu told The Associated Press ahead of the Winter Games. “And I didn’t have a choice, you know what I’m saying? Like, I kind of had to go with it. I was away from my family. I had to live by myself the entire time, and the last few years I was getting really homesick. I was missing Christmas and Thanksgiving. And I was like, ‘This is not right.’”
Liu had graduated high school at 15, so upon her sudden retirement in 2022, she enrolled at UCLA to study psychology.
She spent time with friends on skiing trips. She hiked to the base camp of Mount Everest. She did all the things that she had wanted to do for so long but could not because of the grueling practice and competition schedule of international skating.
“I really despised skating because I thought that was the reason why all that had to happen to me,” Liu said. “Through time I realized, like, it’s not the case. It doesn’t have to be like that. And yeah, I just don’t have to take the sport very seriously.”
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