When you think of Olympic-level figure skating, you probably imagine girls skating to dramatic classical music, usually looking terrified or gravely serious. This was not the case when this year’s Olympic gold medalist, 20-year-old Alysa Liu, took the ice for her free skate performance on February 19th, wearing a gold dress covered in sequins and smiling widely.
The first two-thirds of her performance to “MacArthur Park” by Donna Summer were excellent, but pretty par for the course; she skated comfortably and did a majority of her turns and jumps, all of which looked calm and smooth, like she wasn’t even trying. The last third of the show, when the song was reaching its climax, was when she really took off. She started dancing around the ice like she was at a disco, not the Olympics, spinning and sliding along the ice in a way that made you want to get on the ice that moment and try to skate. She ended her skate looking like she just had the most fun she has ever had, shouting to the camera as she skated off the course, “That’s what I’m f–king talking about!”
This performance scored Liu a whopping 150 points, which, added on to her 3rd-place short program, put her deeply in first place, with a total score of 226 points. The current podium after her performance had Japan’s Mone Chiba in second and Liu’s teammate Amber Glenn, who pulled herself up from 13th after the short program, in 3rd. The only question then was whether the two skaters left to go, Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai, would overthrow Liu after they performed. In the end, they both scored below Liu, making her the first US female figure skating champion since 2002.
Liu was also a 2022 Olympian who ultimately placed 6th. The Olympics were one of the last competitions before her retirement that year. She ended up stating on an Instagram live that she had “reached all of her goals” and that she was “moving on with her life”.
She made her comeback in the 2024 season with a new list of terms for herself and her coaches. These included full control over music, being able to make creative decisions with her choreography and clothes, no policing of her weight, and the ability to take breaks whenever she needed.
Liu was asked about her Olympic experience this time around,
“I was feeling calm, happy, and confident,” she said. “I’ve been having fun the whole time. — At the end of the day, I’m so grateful—I have such a great support system around me, friends who really hold me down. No matter what happens in life, I think I have a very beautiful life story, and I feel really lucky.”
Part of why people love watching Alysa Liu isn’t just her skills on the ice; it’s her outlook on her experiences, her pure love for skating, and her down-to-earth attitude that set her apart from her competitors.
