“What are you doing?” responded an exasperated Glenn. “Go skate!”
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This is what Alysa Liu did. And he won a gold medal, smiling the entire time.
There are no record books to measure such things, but it’s entirely possible that no Olympian has ever smiled as much as Liu did on Thursday night, executing a brilliant, virtually flawless free skate that vaulted her from third place to first. He smiled when he stepped onto the ice, he smiled when he saw Glenn, he smiled through his lutzes, loops and salchows, he smiled when he pointed his left finger to the sky to close his routine. And he smiled, and laughed triumphantly, as he skated up to the trackside camera and shouted, “That’s what I’m talking about!”
That’s the whole joy of the Alysa Liu experience: giddiness, confidence, joy, serenity, and gold medal-winning talent. At an Olympics where so many others have crumbled under the pressure, she literally laughed in the face of the pressure.
“She’s not like us,” her coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said, smiling after her victory. “The rest of us here would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous. I can’t do this. I have a million voices in my head.’ You have a voice in your head that says, ‘I’ve got this.'”
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“The feelings I felt there were calm, happiness and confidence,” he said after coming off the ice, pausing between each word. “Of course I had fun. But I’ve been having fun the whole time.”
(REUTERS/REUTERS)
Her story remains remarkable: Champion at the intermediate, junior and national levels from 2016 to 2020, she made the 2022 Olympic team… and then decided she was done with skating. Completely, fully, slamming the door. He enrolled in classes at UCLA, spent time with friends, traveled the world… all the parts of a normal life that competitive figure skaters are denied.
However, at some point he decided to go back to skating, he decided that was the best way to express his abundance of ideas, in fields away from the ice. If you start talking about music, fashion, or choreography, chances are you’ll become giddy in delight at your 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 glad a lot of people are watching me now so I can show them everything I’ve come up with.”
Liu rediscovered her love for skating, and skating loved her back. In a short time, she rose from retirement to world champion and, now, Olympic gold medalist — the first American woman to win an individual gold medal since 2002.
“I 100 percent believe that if she hadn’t walked away, she wouldn’t be here right now,” DiGuglielmo said. “By giving him that break, not just walking away, but closing the door, his body became healthier, his mind… turned on, all those things that make you the person you are.”
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The most notable thing about Liu is this: For an Olympic athlete, the Olympics themselves don’t faze her. He envisions something bigger, something beyond the Olympic stage, which is truly an achievement considering he is still 20 years old.
“I don’t need this,” he said, holding up his gold medal. “What I needed was the stage. And I got it. So I was fine, no matter what happened. If I fell on every jump,” she said, smiling, “I would still be wearing this dress.”
Someday, a few more Winter Olympics from now, we might look back on Alysa Liu’s 2026 performance as the beginning of a revitalization of interest in the sport of figure skating, the way Dorothy Hamill inspired thousands of young skaters after her gold in 1976. And even if not, we’ll still have this true memory of a perfect night on the ice.
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“When you enjoy doing something, you can excel at it,” DiGuglielmo said. “She can really show that you can do what you love, do it very well and win the Olympics.”
With the medal around his neck and his skates swapped for sneakers, Liu paused to think. “I felt so connected to the audience,” she said, and then laughed. “Oh! I want to be there again!”