Parents Could Learn A Thing Or Two From Alysa Liu's Gold Medal Win
Alysa Liu’s gold medal win almost didn’t happen.
On February 19, the 20-year-old became the first U.S. figure skater to win a women’s individual gold medal in figure skating since Sarah Hughes did it in 2002. But her winning moment, standing on the top of the podium at the Milano Ice Skating Arena after taking a victory lap around the ice wrapped in the American flag, almost didn’t happen.
In 2022, shortly after winning a bronze medal at the 2022 Figure Skating World Championships in Montpellier, France and three years after becoming the youngest-ever U.S. figure skating champion, Liu announced her retirement from the sport at just 16 years old.
“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. … i feel so satisfied with how my skating career has gone,” she wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “Now that i’m finally done with my goals in skating i’m going to be moving on with my life.”
In a March 2025 interview with The Guardian, Liu explained that after skating for most of her life, the COVID-19 pandemic gave her a taste of what it might be like to live a life without the pressure of competing. “Once quarantine started, I was like, ‘Wow! This is what not skating is like.’ And I loved it so much,” she said.
Having grown up in the sport, Liu felt that she was missing out on moments she’d never get back. “My worry was that I’ll have never lived with my family. I’m growing up so fast, so young. I knew that if I continued skating, I would never have a chance at home,” she said.
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Liu took time off the ice, enjoying a few years as a normal teenager before enrolling at UCLA in 2023. When she was ready, she announced her comeback, teasing that she’d be returning to figure skating in a March 2024 Instagram post.
The payoff from her time off came quickly. Liu won gold at the 2025 Figure Skating World Championships in Boston, she took silver in the singles event of the U.S. Championships in both 2025 and in January 2026 and made Team USA. At the 2026 Milano Cortina games, her group gold medal was swiftly followed up by another gold in the singles event.
But none of it could have happened without Liu being left to make her own decisions regarding her figure skating career.
Liu has been open about how her father’s intense involvement in her skating made it hard for her to find joy in the sport. Arthur Liu, who welcomed the Olympian and her four siblings via surrogate as a single dad, poured thousands of dollars into the early years of her career, dismissed several of her coaches and showed up to practices with a radar gun to track the speed of her jumps.
“It was basically his business,” Liu said in a January 2026 interview for CNN’s 60 Minutes. “It wasn’t even really mine.” Arthur’s involvement played a role in making the experience feel like a job to Liu: “Especially as a kid, you don’t really know what you want. Skating feels more like a responsibility or a burden, even.”
It’s a tale as old as competitive youth sports. Research shows that overbearing parents can be a major factor in pushing kids to quit sports. For Liu, her comeback had to be on her own terms, even if it meant reducing her dad’s involvement.
“I get to pick my own program music, I get to help with the creative process of the program,” Liu said on 60 Minutes. “If I feel like I’m skating too much, I’ll back down. If I feel like I’m not skating enough, I’ll ramp it up. No one is going to starve me, tell me what I can and can’t eat.”
To prosper in figure skating, Liu wanted her dad’s support without the intensity. “He’s a great father, I just didn’t want him to be as invested in it as he was before,” she explained.
Competing her own terms, Liu’s newfound relaxed attitude was a source of praise throughout the Olympics. “It’s just another day for her,” teammate Amber Glenn said of Liu’s time in Milan, per NBC. “What makes her attitude toward the sport so incredible is she’s able to see it as not like pressure … of course, there’s pressure … but as like pure enjoyment.”
Now known for her loose, serene style even while landing the most complex of moves, Liu’s journey back to the ice was all about doing it her way. Sometimes you have to let your kid quit so they can prosper.