Perhaps it was not a coincidence that on Friday night Alysa Liu wore gold. That's when the 19-year-old took to the ice in Boston for this year's figure skating world championships and made it all look so easy, like she never left figure skating (which she did), as if her victory had been assured all season (it was not). Skating to Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park," Liu didn't just land her jumps, she seemed to float. Her entire performance exuded ease and joy, without a stumble or slip to be found. When Liu neared the end of her routine with a gorgeous layback slide across the ice, the crowd roared. You know it's a powerful performance when former Olympians Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir stop talking and just let the skating speak for itself. At one point, broadcaster Terry Gannon asked Lipinski if she believed what she was seeing. The Olympic gold medalist replied, "I am not!"
Even Liu herself was surprised, telling her coaches as she walked off the ice into a giant group hug, "What the hell?!?"
Liu quit international competition about two and a half years ago, at age 16. She said at the time that she had reached all of her skating goals and was ready to move with her life. And she did. As Philip Hersh wrote last year for NBC Sports, Liu enrolled in UCLA, visited the Himalayas, and took a ski trip to Lake Tahoe, where she realized she wanted to try skating again.
But this time, it would be on her terms.
It was that time off that made all the difference. I asked Former Comrade Kalyn Kahler for her thoughts because she's written about Liu for years, first at Sports Illustrated and then here at Defector. Here's what she told me:
This was exactly what she wasn’t capable of before—moving a crowd. Skating a BIG skate. In this season, her first year back from retirement, which she called her "starter season" there were no expectations or pressure on her. She was finally in control of her own skating career. She chose to come back to the sport and accept whatever outcome or results she got.
It's so different than the last three years of her career (ages 13 to 16) after she became the youngest skater to win U.S. nationals and the first American woman to land a quad. This time around, she could just skate for fun, for the love of training, and being free to do that worked so well for her that she accidentally won. How good can she be for an Olympic season, with even more time to put it all together?
If you want an example of what Kalyn is talking about, check out Liu's short program from this year's worlds. It's packed, not just with big jumps, but equally big feelings.
Liu's win was so stunning that it overshadowed a lot of gold-medal skating from her fellow Americans. Ilia Malinin, aka Quad God, defended his world championship gold while landing "only" six quads. (He prefers to land seven.) Meanwhile, Madison Chock and Evan Bates took home gold in ice dancing. The only discipline in which the United States didn't medal was pairs.
But the field could look very different in 2026, when Russian skaters might return to the Winter Olympics. If they are allowed to compete as neutral athletes, that would mean the return of Russian figure skating coach Eteri Tutberidze, known for the "Eteri expiration date" because the young girls she coaches, often to first place, tend to retire by age 17. That's a whole two years younger than Liu is now.
That's why Liu's victory is more than just a happy comeback story, though it very much is that. It sits as a rebuke of the narrative, both within and outside of sports, that for women our best years are our youngest years; that time, age, wisdom, and experience—all elements of life for which society rewards men in spades—can do little more than weigh us down and turn us into either feminist killjoys or bummers. Time, age, wisdom, and experience made Alysa Liu a better skater and, for that, the International Skating Union and skating fans around the world were rewarded with a showstopping women's competition. Liu skated for herself on her terms, and we are all the better off for it.
