- Alysa Liu won the Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating, ending a 20-year U.S. medal drought.
- Liu’s career includes winning two national titles, retiring at 16, unretiring at 18, and now winning Olympic gold at 20.
- She secured the victory with an error-free long program, finishing ahead of Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai.
- Liu’s teammate, Amber Glenn, finished in fifth place after a strong long program performance.
MILAN — Alysa Liu arrived at the Olympic figure skating venue Thursday night hopping up and down, more excited for her teammate Amber Glenn than herself. She had watched Glenn’s stellar long program on the shuttle bus over to the Milano Ice Skating Arena and was cheering all the way. Now all she wanted to do was find Glenn and give her a hug.
Liu was an hour and a half away from skating her Olympic long program on what turned out to be the most important night of her life, but instead of worrying about that, she was thinking about someone else: A teammate and a dear friend.
It should then come as no surprise at all that when all was said and done, the most caring, carefree, selfless, happy and optimistic skater in the women’s competition just won the Olympic gold medal.
The Alysa Liu story is absolutely remarkable and utterly unprecedented in figure skating history: She won her first national title at 13. She won her second national title at 14. She retired at 16. She unretired at 18. She won the world championship at 19.
And she just won the Olympic gold medal at 20.
“I literally can’t process this,” Liu said, smiling, as soon as she realized that neither of the two Japanese skaters who came after her had passed her in the standings. ‘There’s no way.”
Liu did not just break the 20-year U.S. Olympic medal drought in women’s figure skating, she obliterated it. Skating with a freedom rarely seen at such an intense moment, especially in this year’s nerve-wracking Olympic skating competition, Liu performed an exquisitely delightful, smooth and error-free long program to Donna Summer’s ‘MacArthur Park,’ then sat back and watched Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai make just enough small mistakes to secure the first U.S. women’s gold medal in figure skating since Sarah Hughes won the 2002 Olympic title in Salt Lake City. It also was the first medal of any color for a U.S. woman since Sasha Cohen’s silver in the 2006 Games.
Liu edged out Sakamoto, the three-time world champion and 2022 Olympic bronze medalist, 226.79 points to 224.90. The difference was Liu’s athleticism: her jumps and spins and other elements that gave her just enough of a lead to offset Sakamoto’s slight edge with the judges in artistry. Nakai, the 17-year-old who led the competition after the short program, won the bronze medal with 219.16 points. Glenn, 26, rose from 13th to fifth with 214.91 points.
When Nakai’s score came up and Liu realized she won, she didn’t do what champions often do and stand alone in triumph. No, she spent her time hugging Nakai and then Sakamoto before finally standing alone just long enough for the cameras to put her on the big screen by herself, and the audience to roar in approval.
Liu laughed and smiled in victory, and she laughed and smiled on her way to victory. It’s doubtful any figure skater has ever smiled more during their four-minute long program in the pressure cooker of the Olympic Games. It was stunning to see, but she had her reasons.
‘When I see other people smiling, I see them in the audience, I have to smile too,” she said afterward. ‘I have no poker face.”
Asked if she was ever nervous, she thought for a moment and said this: “The feelings I felt out there were calm, happy and confident.”
All week, Liu had been saying she wasn’t thinking of winning a medal in the women’s event, didn’t need a medal and wasn’t focused on a medal. She stayed true to her word even as the gold medal was hanging around her neck.
“I don’t need this (medal) but what I needed was the stage. And I got that. So I was all good no matter what happened. If I fell on every jump I would still be wearing this dress, so it’s all good.”
Ah, the dress. She had definitely focused on that prior to the competition. And why not? It was new, shimmering and gold.
“I have a new dress that I was very excited to share on the big stage,” she said. ‘Another unbelievable feeling, hearing the cheers, I felt so connected with the audience, and, ahhh, I want to be out there again.”
Then Liu laughed, and smiled, and laughed some more.
The happiest figure skater on Earth was Olympic champion.
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