Tomorrow afternoon in Milan, Alysa Liu will skate her short program in the women's individual event at the 2026 Winter Olympics. She already has one gold medal from these Games — earned in the team event on February 8. She is the reigning World Champion. She is 20 years old.

Four years ago, she retired from figure skating. She was 16.

The story of how she got from there to here is one of the most unusual comeback arcs in Olympic history — and it starts with a five-year-old at an ice rink in Oakland, California, whose father was a political refugee from China.

The Prodigy

Alysa Liu was born on August 8, 2005, in Clovis, California. She is the oldest of five children. Her father, Arthur Liu, fled China in the 1990s as a young man — a political refugee who had participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement. He eventually became a lawyer in the Bay Area.

Arthur was a fan of Michelle Kwan. When Alysa was five, he brought her to the Oakland Ice Center. She started group lessons with coach Laura Lipetsky, a former skater who had trained under the legendary Frank Carroll, and quickly moved to individual sessions.

What happened next was extraordinary, even by figure skating standards.

At 13, Liu won the 2019 U.S. Championships — becoming the youngest-ever U.S. women's national champion, breaking a record that had stood since Tara Lipinski. In that same season, she became the first American woman to land three triple axels in a single competition, and the first to land both a triple axel and a quadruple lutz in the same program. She defended her title in 2020 at age 14, becoming the youngest skater to win two consecutive senior national titles.

She was, by any measure, a once-in-a-generation talent.

Beijing, Spies, and Burnout

Liu made the 2022 Olympic team for the Beijing Games at age 16. It should have been a dream come true. Instead, it was complicated — in ways no teenager should have to deal with.

In the months leading up to the Games, the FBI contacted Arthur Liu to warn him that he and his daughter had been targeted by Chinese government spies. The Justice Department later charged five men with acting on behalf of China in a scheme to surveil and intimidate Chinese dissidents in the United States. One operative posed as a U.S. Olympic Committee official and tried to get copies of the family's passports. Arthur didn't tell Alysa about any of it until after the Games — he didn't want to scare her or distract her from competing.

Liu competed in Beijing under State Department protection, with at least two escorts at all times. She placed sixth in the women's individual event — the highest finish among American women — and helped Team USA win a bronze medal in the team event. She also won bronze at the 2022 World Championships, the first Worlds medal for a U.S. woman since 2006.

And then, in April 2022, she posted on Instagram that she was done.

She was 16 years old. She had been skating since she was five and had never taken a real break. She'd been homeschooled through middle school and high school. All she had ever known was skating.

The Years Away

Liu enrolled at UCLA. She made friends. She traveled. She hiked to Mount Everest's base camp. She did the things that teenagers are supposed to do and that elite athletes almost never get to.

She also toured with Stars on Ice in the spring of 2022, and appeared on the show periodically — she hadn't abandoned skating entirely, she'd just stepped away from the brutal competition cycle.

Then, sometime in late 2023 or early 2024, she went skiing. And something clicked. The competitive fire came back. She started training again, this time with coach Phillip DiGuglielmo and choreographer Massimo Scali. But on her terms.

The Comeback Season

Liu's return to competition in October 2024 was not an overnight triumph. At her first event back, the Budapest Trophy, she won gold but showed signs of rust — under-rotations on several jumps. At Skate Canada International, she placed sixth. The old Alysa was still in there, but it was clear she was finding her footing again.

And then, at the 2025 World Championships in Boston, everything came together. Liu skated a free program to Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park Suite" that was so joyful, so electric, that most of the crowd was on its feet and dancing by the time she finished. She won the gold medal — the first World Championship title for an American woman since Kimmie Meissner in 2006.

Her first words coming off the ice: "What the actual hell?"

She followed that with a Grand Prix Final title in December, the biggest competitions of the pre-Olympic season. At the 2026 U.S. Championships in January, she won silver behind Amber Glenn, secured her Olympic team spot, and debuted new programs that reflected exactly who she had become: a skater who chooses her own music, dyes her hair platinum blonde the night before a competition, and treats the ice like a place to have fun rather than survive.

The Road to Milan — And the Music Drama

The path to these Olympics included a twist no one saw coming. Liu had been developing a new short program to "This Is How It Feels" by Laufey and d4vd. But in September 2025, the body of a missing teenage girl was found in a vehicle registered to d4vd, and his home was searched by police. Liu immediately scrapped the program.

She reverted to "Promise" by Laufey — the short program that had carried her to the World Championship. It turned out to be the right call. Grammy-winning singer Laufey herself posted a TikTok after Liu's Olympic team event performance that racked up nearly three million views, with the caption: "thats OUR olympian alysa liu."

For her free skate at the Olympics, Liu is using the Donna Summer "MacArthur Park Suite" program that won her Worlds — a program that went through its own chaotic development process. According to a detailed Washington Post feature, Liu didn't have a completed free program until just weeks before the season started, having spent months arguing with her coach and choreographer about Lady Gaga songs that didn't work. The final program came together at the last minute, went through six custom dresses (four worn once, one never), and somehow resulted in one of the most acclaimed free skates in recent memory.

Milan So Far

In the team event, Liu skated her short program to "Promise" and placed second behind Japan's three-time World Champion Kaori Sakamoto, earning nine points for Team USA. Her performance was widely praised — graceful, technically strong, and performed with the unmistakable energy of someone who is genuinely enjoying herself on the ice. Combined with dominant performances from teammates Madison Chock, Evan Bates, and Ilia Malinin, Team USA won gold.

Liu was substituted out for Amber Glenn in the women's free skate portion of the team event, meaning she competed in one segment and still won Olympic gold.

Now she prepares for the main event. The women's individual short program is scheduled for Tuesday, February 17 at 12:45 PM ET. The free skate follows on Thursday, February 19 at 1:00 PM ET.

Her main competition: Sakamoto, who topped both women's segments of the team event and is seeking to become the first Japanese woman to win individual Olympic gold since Shizuka Arakawa in 2006. Amber Glenn, the three-time U.S. champion. Adeliia Petrosian, skating as an Individual Neutral Athlete. And Japan's Ami Nakai, a 17-year-old who defeated Sakamoto twice this season.