Alysa Liu Breaks U.S. Women's Figure Skating's 20-Year Olympic Drought With GOLD
Team USA figure skating came into the Milan Cortina Olympics hot, with a powerful, stacked roster, winning a glorious gold in the team event—before suffering a ton of surprising twists and heartbreaking turns. But they’re leaving Milan on a high because, for the first time in 24 years, a U.S. woman is bringing home gold.
Alysa Liu, the most mentally healthy athlete of possibly all time, soared through her free skate (aka the long program) on Thursday with a performance that brought tears to my eyes—topping off her unbelievable two-year comeback with Olympic gold. It’s been 20 years since a U.S. woman medaled at the Olympics—Sasha Cohen’s silver in Turin in 2006—and 24 years since Sarah Hughes won gold in Salt Lake City.
As she was coming off the ice, she screamed into the cameras, “That’s what I’m fucking talking about.” I screamed the same.
“For her to skate with so much passion, it just reminds you what makes skating so magical,” former Olympian and NBC commentator Tara Lipinski said of her performance. “Very few skaters can bring that to the ice under pressure.” The 20-year-old Californian’s sparkling mental health has been one of the biggest headlines of these Winter Games, since she often talks about how she no longer feels pressure and is just excited to show off her art. Which makes me believe the only thing stopping me from winning an Olympic gold medal is my belief that I can’t! Something for all of us to think about, I think.
Liu was third after Tuesday’s short program, right behind Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakami—making Thursday’s free skate a nail-biter. While this is 17-year-old Nakami’s Olympic debut, and she’s likely to return to the 2030 Olympics, 26-year-old Sakamoto, who won silver at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, said ahead of Milan that this was her final Olympics—and she was determined to win.
And she was really fucking close. Sakamoto and Team USA’s Amber Glenn were the only two figure skaters with a triple axel, and while she nailed it, she lost points after flubbing another jump. (Glenn also nailed her free skate, but due to a devastating error in her short program on Tuesday, lost out on the podium and finished fifth.) Nakami had the most technically difficult free skate, but popped a combination jump and had a lower artistic score, placing her in third. Nakami was last to perform, and following her program, Lipinski said it’d be close, but she believed Liu had it.
Sakamoto ultimately finished 2.53 points behind Liu, and Nakami finished 5.74 points behind Sakamoto.
“Two years ago, if someone told you this was going to happen, you would have laughed,” NBC commentator Terry Gannon said after she won.
Liu, who became the youngest-ever U.S. national champion at 13 in 2019, finished sixth at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, then retired at 16, due to burnout and basically never having done anything else in her life but figure skate. So she lived her life, hung out with friends, took classes at UCLA, hiked to the Mount Everest base camp, then went on a ski trip and realized how much she missed competition. She announced her return in March 2024, then won the 2025 World Championships at 19.
“I said it was going to be epic, I had no idea it was going to be this raw and this amazing because she stepped on that ice free, and stepped on that ice relaxed,” former Olympian and commentator Scott Hamilton said, teary-eyed (same, girl), right before the medal ceremony. “And she showed everybody what can happen on Olympic ice when you simply love what you do.”
God, what a great fucking end to Olympic figure skating. Stay tuned for when we inevitably report on all the young girls in the U.S. getting halo-striped hair and frenulum piercings like Liu.