Video by 60 Minutes | The Alysa Liu Interview.
When Alysa Liu stepped away from competitive figure skating in 2022, she had already done more than most athletes manage in a lifetime. She was a two-time U.S. champion, an Olympian, and one of the most technically advanced skaters American women’s skating had ever produced. She was also 16 years old and finished.
“I knew I was done for a long time,” Liu said later. At that level, skating had begun to feel like “the fast life,” a blur of interviews, travel, expectations, and constant motion. Success came early, but enjoyment did not always follow.
Three years later, Liu is back, not as a prodigy racing the clock, but as a fully formed competitor. After winning the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships and the Grand Prix Final, she has reestablished herself at the top of the sport. With the next Winter Olympics now on the horizon, her timing has shifted the conversation from comeback to contention.
🏘️ A Bay Area Path, Far From Skating’s Center
Liu’s rise never followed figure skating’s usual geography. She grew up in the Bay Area and trained primarily at the Oakland Ice Center, far from the sport’s traditional power hubs. Long commutes, public rinks, and a relatively unglamorous routine defined her early years.
She was raised by her father, Arthur Liu, a Chinese political dissident who fled China after participating in the Tiananmen Square protests and continued organizing activism in the United States. That history resurfaced publicly before the Beijing Olympics, when U.S. authorities later alleged that Chinese agents attempted to monitor or intimidate him.
At home, life was quieter and more ordinary. Liu speaks fondly of family meals and Chinese food, which she still seeks out while traveling. “That’s all we cook,” she said. “So when I’m on the road, I always try to find Chinese or Asian food.”
🏆 A Prodigy Who Rewrote Expectations
At 13, Liu became the youngest U.S. women’s champion in history. She repeated the following year and helped usher American women’s skating into a new technical era, landing triple Axels and becoming the first U.S. woman credited with a quadruple Lutz in competition.
But the pace was relentless. Looking back, Liu describes those early years as compressed and indistinct. “Most of it was a blur,” she said. “I was so young. My brain wasn’t fully developed. I was traveling so much, and I started to get sick of it.”
What she wanted, increasingly, was simple. Time at home. Friends. Family. Space.
Video by Saonvision | Wow! Alysa Liu’s spectacular free skate captures the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships.
⛷️ Burnout and Stepping Away
Liu spoke plainly about burnout and a desire to experience life beyond training cycles and judging panels. The decision was not dramatized or framed as a crisis. She framed it as clarity.
After the Beijing Olympics, she quit. The move surprised many in the sport, though Liu says she had known long before making it public. “People were confused,” she said. “I hadn’t really explained my reasoning yet.”
For two years, life unfolded outside elite competition. School replaced training blocks. She earned her driver’s license, went to concerts, completed a year of college, traveled for the first time, and spent time simply being a teenager. “I got to experience real life,” she said. “I got to know myself.”
🔄 A Return That Felt Different
The path back began unexpectedly, not at a rink but on a ski slope. Liu discovered she loved skiing, the exhaustion, the cold, the burn in her legs. It felt familiar. Too familiar.
“If I enjoyed skiing that much, there was no way I didn’t enjoy skating,” she said. The rink, unlike the mountains, was only 20 minutes from home. She went back out on the ice to test the feeling.
It stuck.
Video by ss | Alysa Liu’s beautiful short program at the 2025 US National Skating Championships.
This time, the framework had changed. Liu no longer saw skating only as a grind but as a form of art, a place where music, dance, sport, and design converged. She became deeply involved in her programs, from choreography to costumes, working closely with her dress designer and building vision boards for each look. “I’m really excited to display my art,” she said.
Physically, the break helped too. Puberty had settled. Her balance improved. “Funny enough, I felt better at 19 than I did at 16,” she said.
⏱️ What Her Second Act Signals
That shift showed on the ice. Liu skated with ease and confidence at the 2025 World Championships and won. Then, she followed up with a Grand Prix Final victory against a deep international field.
With Milano–Cortina 2026 approaching, Liu views the Olympics differently now. “A lot of people think of the Olympics as the end of a movie,” she said. “For me, it’s not the end. It’s more like a side quest.”
In a sport built around early peaks and brief careers, Liu’s return shows that walking away can extend, not end, a career. Her Bay Area roots, her family history, and her decision to step back underscore a different path, one built on agency rather than urgency.
Alysa Liu is no longer skating toward the future. She is skating in the present. And this time, the timeline belongs to her.
Video by NBC Bay Area | Alysa Liu sets eyes on Milan 100 days out from Olympics.
