EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsALYSA LIU DIDN'T GO far after receiving her scores and stepping off the "Kiss and cry" podium.She had just taken over first place at the U.S. national championships in January. "Damn, that's good, right?" she remarked to her coaches, showing off her multicolored, tree ring-inspired hair and shiny frenulum piercing as she smiled on the big screen to the fans. There was just one more competitor to go. An arena official made sure Liu would have a clear path to get backstage and away from the cameras but she stopped after just a few feet.Instead of continuing to walk through the black curtain and out of the watchful eyes of fans and reporters, Liu posted up directly in front of the media row next to the ice. For the next four minutes, Liu stood, clapped and cheered loudly as Amber Glenn thrilled the crowd. By the end of the program, Liu had recruited Isabeau Levito, who was currently in second place, to join her and the two roared in ovation as Glenn skated off the ice.During the next few moments, as Glenn did an interview for those in the arena and while her score was announced to the crowd, Liu couldn't stop smiling.Glenn had won the competition in dominant fashion to claim her third consecutive national title, and Liu, and Levito, rushed to join her in an embrace. "You deserve this," Liu said to Glenn before the three hugged again and excitedly and collectively decided they all deserved it.It was a scene as unique as Liu's now-trademark hair."I mean, I would say that I was watching my competitors," three-time national champion and 2014 Olympian Ashley Wagner told ESPN. "But I was watching backstage so people wouldn't see my reaction. Alysa is watching ice-side because she doesn't care about her reaction. She is truly just supporting Amber and what she's going after. That's the difference."Liu, the reigning world champion, finished in second place at the national championships, and by the end of the weekend, she had officially been named to the U.S. team. Milan marks her second appearance at the Olympics, and she could very well be the one to reverse the country's 20-year medal drought among women. But this time around, everything is different. And this time, Liu, 20, has done everything unequivocally and authentically her way."I had no art to show before. People were making me skate to this [music], putting me in that dress, I had no control," Liu told ESPN in the fall. "I didn't even know who was making the decisions and I didn't want to be there anyways. ... The vibes are so different now. The way I was being treated before is a lot different than I am now."I have such a different team and I treat myself differently. I'm older and I've learned so many lessons. I'm so much better at protecting my peace and knowing why I do the things I do."THE INTERNET IS FULL of videos of Liu's earliest competitive days in the sport.Her father, Arthur, who first started her in skating as a 5-year-old in their hometown of Oakland, California, created a YouTube account that remains live to this day. There are nearly a dozen videos of a 10-year-old Liu in various novice and intermediate competitions. It doesn't require much skating expertise to recognize her obvious talent and command of the ice. Every posted routine features a tiny Liu jumping with ease, confidently maneuvering around the rink, complete with intricate costumes, glittery hair accessories, old-timey jazz and swing music -- and a plastered smile on her face.Wagner, who retired from the sport in 2019 and is working for NBC as a commentator during the Olympics, remembers the first time she saw Liu.She's not entirely sure how old Liu was at the time or even what division she was competing in, but Wagner was there to support a young skater she trained with and it proved to be a memorable experience."I had never seen a kid skate so bad at a competition," Wagner said of Liu. "She was just devastated. It was really the worst skate of her life."But despite the stumbles -- and there were quite a few stumbles -- Wagner saw something in Liu that day. She turned to her friend Adam Rippon, a 2018 Olympian and Wagner's current co-host on "The Runthrough" podcast, and told him Liu was going to be special. She then went and told Liu the same thing."I said to her, 'Hey, this was a really rough skate, but it doesn't define you. I can't wait to see you on the big stage one day. I know you're going to be there,'" Wagner recalled.And soon enough, Liu was.At 12, she was competing at the 2018 U.S. junior national championships, as the youngest competitor in the field. She won. With an astounding seven triple flips in her free skate, all in the second half of her program for a scoring bonus, there was an 18-point deficit between her and the rest of the field at the event's conclusion. It was a star-making performance.Liu was too young to compete at the world junior championships, but that simply gave her more time to train. By the end of the year, she landed the triple axel in competition for the first time at the Asian Open Trophy -- becoming the youngest woman in history to do so and just the fourth American. It wasn't long before she debuted a quadruple jump in competition, a feat that remains rare among women.Liu doesn't know why she wanted to train such big jumps at such a young age. "I had no real intentions," she said. "When people would ask me about my goals, I would say, 'Oh, I want to land a triple axel,' but for what purpose did I want to do that? I didn't have one."She won her first senior national title as a 13-year-old in 2019 -- the youngest U.S. women's national champion in history. The following year she became the youngest woman to win her second national championship crown.Though Liu certainly appeared to be America's next big Olympic medal hope, cracks began to surface during the pandemic in 2020. She had finished in third place at the junior world championships and then, days later, everything was shut down to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Competitions were canceled and her training was radically altered.Liu continued, but something had changed. She enjoyed having more free time to explore other interests, but the isolation also made her understand more about what she needed to be happy."The social aspect was immediately gone and I'm a very social person," Liu said of that time. "I wasn't skating with my friends anymore. Connection is such an important thing to me, in practice and even in competitions. I want to connect with people."When competitions returned, Liu, who had experienced a substantial growth spurt, struggled with her more difficult jumps. She finished in fourth place at the national championships.During the 2021-2022 season, the first year she was eligible to compete at the senior level internationally, she was in third place after the short program at the U.S. championships when a positive COVID-19 test forced her to withdraw before the free skate. Still, she was named to the Olympic team because of her previous results.At the Games, she finished in sixth place (following the disqualification of Kamila Valieva) and was the highest-finishing American woman in the event. Liu told reporters how excited she was to have completed "two clean programs" and shared how much fun the experience was. Just over a month later, she finished in third place at the 2022 world championships.A few weeks later, she retired with no warning or fanfare. She was 16."Heyyyyy so I'm here to announce that I am retiring from skating," Liu wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post. "I started skating when I was 5 so that's about 11 years on the ice and it's been an insane 11 years. A lot of good and a lot of bad but (you know) that's just how it is. I've made so many friends, and so so sooo many good memories that I'll have for the rest of my life."She went on to say she would be spending her free time with her friends and family and concluded the post with a simple sendoff. "I'm really glad I skated."WHILE LIU'S CHILDHOOD had been a uniquely prodigious existence, devoid of most typical experiences, her next chapter was, well, kind of normal.Like many teenagers, she hung out with her friends and her four younger siblings, went to concerts, got her driver's license and tried to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. She enrolled at UCLA and began studying psychology. Having rarely had the chance to go on vacation because of her demanding training schedule, Liu jumped at the opportunity to go on a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp in May 2023 with friends.It remains the most cherished memory of her life in self-imposed skating exile. She had no phone service -- something that was initially jarring for a professed "addict" -- for weeks and it allowed her to fully connect with those around her."It was such a beautiful experience," she said. "It felt like such girlhood, because we were with each other 24/7. We had to pee squatting behind rocks together. We were 17, we were tired, we were cold a lot of the trip, but it was almost spiritual, I guess."We were really having a lot of deep conversations, trying to understand each other, trying to understand life in general. I think that experience honestly helped me a lot."While Liu had always been able to identify as a figure skater, for the first time, she was starting to know who she was as a person, too. "I couldn't know myself if I only ever did one thing," she said.The freedom away from the ice allowed her to get in touch with her creative side and discover passions like dancing, music and fashion. But she also remembered how much she needed to move her body and find a way to release her boundless energy. A family ski trip made her realize exactly where she needed to be."I love this feeling," Liu remembered while gliding down the trail. "I need to train and be tired again. And the mountains are really far away and it's a day trip. That's too much work. The rink is right there. And if skiing feels just like skating, why don't I just skate? I need to not be so stubborn."It was just for fun at first.On Jan. 5, 2024, Liu went back to the ice, during a public session. She was amazed at how naturally everything seemed to come back to her, including a double axel and triple salchow. Two weeks later, she was back again. She quickly fell in love with skating all over again. Or maybe for the first time really. She began to see it as an art form, a way of creative expression -- in a way she never had been able to previously.But if she was going to return to competition, everything had to be different. Everything had to come from her.Her dad had been heavily involved in her first iteration and had invested a lot emotionally and financially in her career, but she knew he would have to take a back seat in order for Alysa 2.0 to be successful. (When asked in a recent interview with "60 Minutes" if he was hurt by her decision to exclude him in her comeback, Arthur Liu said, "A little bit. It's like I brought you up to two U.S. national titles.")Liu reached out to Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali, whom she had previously worked with, to see if they would coach her again. No one had ever successfully achieved such a comeback, and DiGuglielmo was pragmatic in his reaction and response. Not to mention, he had been fired by Arthur previously."I tried every single thing I could tell her about why she shouldn't do it," DiGuglielmo told NBC Sports. "She had a reason to counter every one of my points. I said, 'Other people have tried this, and it didn't work.' She said, 'But they're all older than me.' I said, 'OK, but it's really hard to get back to worlds,' and she said, 'No, I can do it.'"Eventually, DiGuglielmo and Scali relented and officially were on board. Liu, still just 18, continued to make it known that she would be the final decision-maker when it came to her career. If she needed to take a day off, she would. She could eat what she wanted when she wanted. She would have a say in her choreography, music and costumes. She was in charge."I'm so intentional now," Liu said. "I'm so grounded. Everything I do has a reason for why I do it."PREVIOUS NATIONAL CHAMPIONS Gracie Gold and Rachael Flatt had tried in recent years to stage comebacks after hiatuses from the sport but were unable to rediscover their former level. Michelle Kwan, the nine-time U.S. champion and two-time Olympic medalist and arguably one of the best to ever skate, saw her comeback derailed because of injuries in 2006. Sasha Cohen, the last American woman to bring home an Olympic medal in 2006, attempted to return ahead of the 2010 Games following a four-year break from competition, but a fourth-place finish at national championships ended that dream and she retired soon after."It's not that people haven't tried before, it's that there is something to be said about mechanically how specific skating is," Wagner explained to ESPN. "There are these tiny, fine-tuned muscles that can get out of shape really quickly and you kind of lose feeling of the jumps really quickly. When you take time away, there's no way to train those muscles unless you're actively jumping, spinning, doing run-throughs. Coming back usually doesn't end well."Liu was not deterred by any of it. She joyfully announced she was back in an Instagram post on March 1, 2024 -- less than two months since her first time back in the rink. At the end of a video containing training footage, there was a simple message: "This 2024-2025 season, back on the ice."Seven inches taller than when she first took home the senior national crown, and with a reinvigorated attitude, Liu officially returned to competition at the 2024 CS Budapest Trophy in October. It wasn't perfect -- she underrotated her triple toe loop in the free skate and struggled on other jumps -- but she still managed to win the title. Three months later, she stunned the crowd by finishing first in the short program at the U.S. championships. She finished the competition in second place, behind Glenn, after the free skate.At the world championships in March -- just one year after officially announcing her return -- Liu let the world know she was truly back. Cartwheeling onto the ice while being announced ahead of warmups and with a bouncy and youthful shaggy ponytail, Liu skated two nearly flawless programs, winning both the short program and the free skate. She became the first American woman to win the world title since 2006.By the end of the event, she had improbably gone from a 2026 hopeful to an Olympic gold medal front-runner. Many in attendance were in awe, but perhaps no one more than Gold, who understood the journey in a way few others could."To take two years off and to come back and come back all the way to win a world title, that is exceptional," Gold said after. "It's a really, really incredible story."AFTER COMPETING IN the short program at the U.S. nationals in January, Liu spent the following day, or part of it anyway, in a chair at a hair salon in St. Louis.In 2023, she had started the tradition of marking each coming year with a ring in her hair, like a tree. Liu decided the time was right to upgrade the look. She found a local colorist who bleached and toned the rings. The new do instantly drew attention ahead of her free skate. She later explained to reporters she wanted something different and to "go lighter."As atypical as it might have been to do mid-competition, it seemed fitting for Liu. In addition to the hair change, she was already debuting a new program -- something almost unheard of at a competition of that magnitude -- set to Lady Gaga and complete with an instantly viral dress based on Gaga's outfit at the 2009 Video Music Awards. In typical Liu fashion, she later announced she would not be competing that free skate at the Olympics, and would instead revert to the "MacArthur Park" program.In a sport steeped in tradition, rigid rules and expectations, Liu defies all of it. Sure, there's her hair and her piercings, and her off-ice wardrobe and vocabulary more resemble a skateboarder than a figure skater, but it's her demeanor and attitude that stand out most to those around the sport.While competing, she appears relaxed -- no matter the stakes -- and makes the near impossible look easy. The smile, the same one seen in her earliest online videos, remains on her face throughout, although this time, it feels genuine."She's amazing. She doesn't feel pressure," Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic gold medalist, said on an episode of the "Milan Magic" podcast. "She's unusual. She approaches the competition with this 'joie de vivre,' like she's performing in her backyard on a frozen pool."Tara Lipinski, the 1998 Olympic gold medalist and current NBC commentator on the "A Touch More" podcast, added that Liu seems almost immune to what so often has caused others to struggle."I don't know what secret she has, but she is, it's almost like she's skating in this little bubble where she doesn't feel the pressure," Lipinski said. "She tells us, 'I don't feel it.' She has what every athlete is searching for, the secret of how to mentally be that tough. I always joke because I'm like, all the skaters should be calling her and being like, you need to be my sports psychologist. What are you doing that you're able to deliver under pressure this seamlessly?" It's not just that she doesn't let the weight of the moment or the expectations get to her. After stumbling on the landing of her triple lutz during her free skate at the Cup of China event in October, Liu was forced to improvise late in the program. It was something that would have tripped up many others, but Liu's eyes lit up when asked about it soon after, and she grinned when talking about it."I have ADHD and I love situations that I'm not expecting," Liu said. "It gives me a dopamine rush. With little mistakes, I love working through it. I have to think. And although it's not ideal to make those mistakes in competition, it was made and my brain still was releasing those chemicals and I had to think, 'What next? I have to add a combo here and here.' It was a little bit of fun and a nice little challenge."Liu finished in second place, behind Glenn. But there was no animosity. Instead, they jumped in on the "Beez in the Trap" trend on TikTok -- with Glenn taking on the "What's Up?" portion and Liu channeling her inner Nicki Minaj, circa 2012 -- and praised each other in the press.Their friendship, as well as with Levito, was on full display in St. Louis as they cheered one another on and playfully joked around with one another during news conferences that were equal parts chaotic and sincere.The scene was a far cry from what many expect in the sport from the superstar women. While in-country rivalries, from Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding to Lipinski and Kwan to Wagner and Gold, have defined the perceptions of the sport for decades, multiple reporters publicly remarked on the shift. Wagner herself couldn't help but feel encouraged by what she was seeing."I just think they're demonstrating that sport and the real world can exist on separate planes," Wagner said. "And that's really refreshing to me as an athlete who came up where I was in an intense rivalry with Gracie Gold. And she and I are like oil and water and we were never going to be friends and we were always going to be competition but we were also never presented with any other option or modeled any other option. ... Here you have these three women being so openly themselves and also embracing each other, celebrating what makes them so successful on the ice. It is the healthiest I've seen this sport."Having already won gold in the team event, Liu has the chance to leave Milan with two Olympic medals. But no matter what happens this week, she has already left a lasting legacy in the sport. From childhood phenom to comeback kid and world champion, Liu has done more at 20 than most will in a lifetime. And she has done it unapologetically her way, perhaps paving the way for the next generation of skaters to embrace a more unorthodox path, filled with smiles, friendship and authenticity.Another medal would make for a great accessory -- and gold does match her new hair color well -- but Liu's primary concern in Milan isn't standing on top of the podium, or results at all for that matter."It's the Olympics. I kind of want to use it as a stage to show my programs, to show people who I am," Liu said. "I just want to show my art."
