Alysa Liu

Alysa Liu (born August 8, 2005) is an American figure skater. She is the 2026 Winter Olympic champion in both women's singles and in the team event, the 2025 World champion, the 2022 World bronze medalist, the 2025–26 Grand Prix Final champion, a two-time Grand Prix medalist, a four-time Challenger Series champion, and a two-time U.S. national champion.

At the junior level, Liu was the 2020 World Junior bronze medalist, the 2019–20 Junior Grand Prix Final silver medalist, a two-time Junior Grand Prix champion, and the 2018 U.S. junior national champion. In 2019, Liu, then 13, became the youngest-ever U.S. women's national champion. The following year, she became the youngest skater to win two senior national titles, the first woman to win consecutive U.S. titles since Ashley Wagner in 2012 and 2013 and the first woman to win the junior and senior titles back-to-back since Mirai Nagasu in 2008.

At the 2025 World Championships, she became the first U.S. woman to win a world title since Kimmie Meissner in 2006. At the 2026 Winter Olympics, she became the first American woman to win an individual medal since Sasha Cohen in 2006 and also the first American gold medalist since Sarah Hughes in 2002.

An accomplished jumper, Liu was the first woman to complete a quadruple jump and a triple Axel in the same program, and the first to land a triple Axel-triple toe loop combination in the short program. She was the first American woman to land a quadruple jump and the first American junior woman to complete a triple Axel in international competition. In 2019, Liu was named to the inaugural Time 100 Next under the "Phenoms" section.

Early life

Alysa Liu was born on August 8, 2005, in Clovis, California, and raised in Richmond, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alysa began skating at the age of 5, and by the age of 7, she was already competing at national levels. Her father, Arthur Liu, is a Chinese dissident who went into exile in the U.S. through Operation Yellowbird in 1989 due to the crackdown on participants in the Tiananmen Square Protests; he was a graduate student in Guangzhou, China. At age 25, Arthur arrived in Oakland, California, and initially worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant in Berkeley. After earning an M.B.A. from California State University, East Bay, and a law degree from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, he became an attorney.

Alysa is the oldest of five children, with siblings Selina and triplets Joshua, Justin, and Julia, all of whom were born via surrogacies through two anonymous egg donors. Their mother, Yan Qingxin "Mary", continued to serve as their legal guardian after she and Arthur divorced.

Career

Early juvenile career

Liu began skating at age five when her father, a fan of Michelle Kwan, brought her to the Oakland Ice Center in Oakland, California. She began taking group lessons with her first and childhood coach, Laura Lipetsky, a former figure skater who had trained under Frank Carroll, and quickly moved to individual sessions. Lipetsky began teaching Liu at the age of 5½ years old.

As a juvenile in 2015, Liu came in seventh place at the Central Pacific Regionals. At the 2016 U.S. Championships, at 10 years old she became the youngest female skater to earn the intermediate gold medal, winning by less than a point. She was first after the short program; her free skate included two triple Salchows, the first completed in combination with a double toe loop and earning her a "program-high 7.00 points".

Competing in the novice category, Liu placed fourth at the 2017 U.S. Championships. She was in first place after her short program with a 1.22 point lead. Her short program included a split jump into a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination, which was ruled under-rotated, and a triple flip. Liu fell to fourth place after the long program in which she landed two triple-triple combinations but did not earn sufficient program component scores to retain her narrow lead.

Junior career

2017–18 season: Junior debut and National junior champion

Liu opened her season with a silver medal at the 2017 Asian Open Trophy in which she finished second to Japan's Mana Kawabe. She was the youngest skater to compete in the junior division at the 2018 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California. She won the competition despite suffering from a cold and sore throat. She scored a season's best in the short program with an almost seven-point lead going into the free skate. Her short program included three level-4 spins, a triple flip-triple toe loop combination, and a triple Lutz, earning her 63.83 points. She earned 120.33 points during her long program after landing two double Axels and seven triple jumps, which were all backloaded in the second half of the program. Liu was given extra points on all her jumps except for the triple flip-single loop-triple Salchow combination. She earned an overall score of 184.16 points and the second highest-ever score on the junior level. Liu was ineligible to compete at the 2018 World Junior Championships because she was not old enough. She was sent to the 2018 International Challenge Cup instead, where she won the advanced novice silver medal behind Hana Yoshida of Japan.

2018–19 season

In August 2018, Liu competed as a novice at the 2018 Asian Open Trophy in Bangkok, Thailand. She won the gold, outscoring the silver medalist, Japan's Sara Honda, by over ten points. She landed a ratified triple Axel in the free skate, becoming the youngest skater in history to perform a clean triple Axel in competition and the fourth American female skater to do so following Tonya Harding, Kimmie Meissner, and Mirai Nagasu.

2019–20 season: World Junior bronze and Junior Grand Prix Final silver

Liu's first competition for the 2019–2020 season was at the inaugural Aurora Games, an international all-female competition held in August 2019. She earned perfect scores, led the U.S. team to first place overall, and was the first American female skater to successfully complete a quadruple Lutz in competition, although not at an ISU-recognized event.

Liu made her international competition debut at the ISU Junior Grand Prix in Lake Placid in August 2019. Skating to "Don't Rain on My Parade" by Barbra Streisand in her short program, she scored 69.30 points, breaking her own personal best short program record by almost 20 points. She completed all her jumps, including three triples, completed three level-4 spins, and earned positive grades of execution for all seven elements.

During her long program, Liu became the first American female skater to complete a quadruple Lutz in a competition. She also became the first female skater to complete a quadruple jump and a triple Axel in the same program in a competition. Skating to pianist Jennifer Thomas' version of "New World Symphony," which was choreographed by Lori Nichol, Liu started her long program with a triple Axel-double toe loop combination, followed by her quadruple Lutz, for which she earned 13.80 points. She fell on her second triple Axel but successfully executed her following six triple jumps. She also earned level-4 scores for her three spins and top marks for her step sequence, earning a 59.66 program component score. She won the event by 21.52 points over the silver medalist, South Korean Park Yeon-jeong. It was the first in 20 Junior Grand Prix events that a non-Russian skater won and the first time an American won a Junior Grand Prix event since Polina Edmunds in 2013.

Liu's second slot in the Junior Grand Prix was in Poland. She came in fourth after the short program but came from behind to win the event. In her short program, she completed, at the start of her program, a triple Axel-triple toe loop, the first in Junior Grand Prix history. She doubled a planned triple loop, trailing by a little over four points going into the free skate. In her free skate, Liu "just about held onto" her first jump, a triple Axel, but improved as she went along, completing a combination that included a double toe loop. She then completed a quadruple Lutz, a "much better" triple Axel, a triple loop, and "two excellent combinations—triple Lutz-triple toe loop and triple Lutz-Euler-triple Salchow". She ended her program with a triple flip and three level-4 spins. She earned a season's best score of 138.99 in the free skate and 203.10 overall. She qualified for the Junior Grand Prix Final in second place, the first American female skater to do so since Karen Chen and Polina Edmunds in 2013, with 30 points.