A New Ice Age
Alysa Liu Making Olympic History and Changing the Standards for Women in Sports.
by Hannah Corbitt ★ March 19th, 2026
Design by: Maisy Wood
With her signature striped hair and a frenulum piercing to pair with her beaming smile, Alysa Liu is paving the way for other skaters to break the norm with her alt-style and calm assurance under pressure.
With her gold medal performance at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Liu secured the United States’ first Olympic gold in women’s singles figure skating in 24 years. Her victory represents not just an inspiring comeback story, but a cultural shift.
Liu first captured national attention when she became known as a prodigy. Liu began skating at the age of five, and since then has been an athlete of “firsts.” In 2019 at the age of thirteen, she became the youngest-ever U.S. women’s national champion. In 2020, she continued to break records by being the first woman to win consecutive U.S. titles since Ashley Wagner in 2012 and 2013, and at the 2025 World Championships was the first woman to win a world title since Kimmie Meissner in 2006.
After placing sixth in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Liu stepped away from the sport and announced her retirement at 16, hinting at feelings of burnout. In a sport known for intense pressure and relentless scrutiny, especially for young women, her decision was revolutionary and eye-opening for many viewers.
Figure skating is known for their athletes retiring young, usually reaching the peak of their career between the ages of sixteen to eighteen. For women, it typically means this intersects with toxic standards like body image, restrictive diets, and the expectation that the height of your career can only be achieved as a teenager.
After two years of retirement, Liu made her return in March 2024. Her comeback was not out of obligation, but about her own desire to return to the sport she loved, claiming that the struggle and the challenge is what brings her joy.
When confiding in her coaches, Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali, she decided to set ground rules on what she wanted control over when she re-entered the skating world. “I get to pick my own program music,” she explained to her coaches and father, who was very involved in her career since the beginning. “If I feel like I’m skating too much, I’ll back down, and no one is going to starve me.”
Liu’s experience in the 2022 Olympic Beijing Games was a controversial time as well. For a while, Russia’s skaters dominated the podium year after year. Specifically, skaters Alexandra Trusova, Kamila Valieva, and Anna Shcherbakova took an almost “musical chairs” rotation through the podium in each major event. The trio of athletes received training from the same coach, Eteri Tutberidze.
Russia has since been banned from the Olympics due to the doping scandal in the 2022 Olympics and its ongoing war with Ukraine. Tutberidze’s training was highly technique-focused with little emphasis on artistry, which put stress on her students and a highly competitive atmosphere for their competition season.
Trusova, a highly accomplished and fan-favorite skater, was promised by Eteri that she would win if she landed five quads in her single program, which hadn’t been done before in the female division. When Trusova successfully set her record and finished second, while Shcherbakova accomplished first, this put a strain on her mental health as her reaction was publicized. She was seen breaking down in the background of an interview, while Shcherbakova celebrated her win alone as those went to calm down Trusova and Valieva.
During this time, Valieva tested positive in her drug test, causing an uproar and confirming Tutberidze’s toxic training methods. Valieva placed fourth before she was placed on a four-year ban from competing. It was revealed that she had been given 56 different drugs and supplements.
The 2022 Olympics had a highly competitive environment and ended in very much the same light, with other competitors' wins overshadowed by the controversy. In contrast, this year’s Olympics had a more fun and lighthearted mood, especially among skaters. When asked about making mistakes, Liu answered, “Messing up doesn’t take away from that. It’s still something, it’s still a story. A bad story is still a story, and I think that’s beautiful. There’s no way to lose.”
Liu’s first-place finish was followed by Sakamoto Kaori and third by Nakai Ami, both from Japan. Sakamoto placed third in 2022 and became one of Japan’s youngest women’s singles medallists. Places didn’t matter on the podium for any of the girls, for they each celebrated excitedly with one another after every score was revealed, and again during their group interviews.
Liu grew up in California with her father, Arthur Liu, who emigrated from China to the U.S. in 1989. Growing up as an Asian-American in the U.S. would’ve brought on another level of scrutiny as an athlete for Liu that wouldn’t be applied in the same way for competitors otherwise. She chooses to express herself and show no fear, her alternative style and words of encouragement bringing fresh perspectives to the otherwise strict conduct and rules that figure skating was known for.
To see an Olympic podium fully composed of Asian women reflects the growing visibility of women of color in a sport that has not always felt inclusive. This year, viewers can see that excellence in athleticism is not confined to one nationality, one body type, or one narrow aesthetic.
At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, U.S. women won 6 gold medals and 17 total medals, setting a new record for the most medals by American women at a Winter Games. To see women succeeding in an environment that is very much male-dominated, well, that can only be expressed by Liu’s own reaction after scoring gold. “That’s what I’m f***ng talking about!”
Edited by: Alexa Murland