Alysa Liu once walked away from figure skating to find herself. When she eventually returned, her biggest challenge wasn’t relearning difficult jumps. Instead, it was facing her past decision to leave.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
Liu continued to win medals on the ice. However, after the 2022 Beijing Olympics and World Championships, she stepped away from the sport. Looking back, she notes that leaving was the exact moment she truly began to find her confidence.
“I had to get to that point of being so extremely done to completely leave skating,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “And then when I left is when I gained confidence… I felt like I was betraying my 16-year-old self’s decision to quit,” Liu added.
“Girl, you built up so much courage to quit. And now I’m kind of just throwing it aside and coming back.” But once she made peace with that feeling, returning became surprisingly easy.
But by then, Liu had already lived through what felt like several careers. She became the youngest U.S. national champion at 13, mastered jumps that few women had landed, and eventually earned an Olympic team gold and individual gold in Milan. Yet behind those achievements was a teenager carrying an enormous weight.
“Figure skating was all I knew,” Liu recalls. She had been homeschooled from middle school, with training and competition dominating her days. During the pandemic, when her rink finally closed, she experienced something unfamiliar: time away from the ice. “I was like, ‘I like this. I like having a day off. I want many more days off.'”
The break also forced her to acknowledge something she had struggled to say aloud: she wasn’t happy.
Talking about her struggles, at 16, while preparing for the Beijing Olympics, Liu remembers breaking down during a warm-up. She had been jumping rope when the tears started and continued once she stepped onto the ice. Her coaches eventually suggested taking a walk.
“I was grateful for that and told them that I wanted to quit and that I wasn’t happy,” she said. “I had many days like that.”
Her talent kept pulling her forward. She made the 2022 Olympic team and finished sixth in Beijing, but the achievement belonged as much to the expectations surrounding her as it did to Liu herself.
“I ended up staying. Making the Olympics was the dream for me of everyone around me, and also the dream of my younger self,” she says. “Although I was struggling to understand, was it really my dream to go to the Olympics as a kid or the dream that everyone else told me I should have?”
After Beijing, she finally chose herself…
Liu enrolled at UCLA to study psychology, traveled to Mount Everest base camp and discovered life away from competition. She became a passionate hiker, movie lover and cat mom. For a while, skating barely crossed her mind. Then came a ski trip in early 2024.
The rush of flying down the mountain brought back a feeling she remembered from skating. But this time, she didn’t rush back. She started slowly, skating once every two weeks before eventually making it a weekly habit.
“I didn’t hop back into it right away. I eased my way back in,” she says. “It was so fun, and I was like, ‘I would love to do this every day.'”
The role of her coach during this phase of her career was extremely crucial…
Her Coach Saw a Different Alysa Liu
Coach Phillip DiGuglielmo understood what had changed. Rather than trying to recreate the prodigy he once knew, he supported the athlete Liu had become.
“Alysa is a force of nature. Join her or get out of the way,” he says. He praised her desire to discover herself rather than imitate another skater, adding that working collaboratively with Liu was “refreshing.”
That freedom became central to her comeback. Music, costumes, training, and even her distinctive striped hair became ways for Liu to express herself.
“I really value my creative freedom,” she says. “A lot of why I skate is to get to express myself, so without that, it’s like, ‘Why would I skate?'”
The change was visible on the ice. Liu eventually stood atop the podium in both the team and women’s events in Milan, turning a sport she once needed to escape into one she genuinely wanted to do.
Even Olympic teammate Amber Glenn noticed the difference. “Of course there’s pressure, but [for her] it’s just pure enjoyment,” Glenn said.
Now, with her Stars on Ice tour underway, Liu is looking toward another competitive season. She has confirmed that she plans to compete in the 2026-27 Grand Prix season and is eager to return to daily training.
“Honestly, we haven’t really talked about the goals we want for next season,” Liu says. “But I’m really excited to get back into training,” she added in a previous interview.
Her ambition may eventually stretch even further. Asked about the 2030 French Alps Olympics, Liu didn’t close the door. “Honestly, if I can keep up for four years, I would love to do it.”
Perhaps that is the most meaningful part of Liu’s return. She is no longer skating because a younger version of herself, her coaches, or anyone else demanded it. She is skating because she wants to.