MILAN (AP) — Alysa Liu is back at the Olympics on her own terms, and she’s thriving on the U.S. team.
Four years ago, Liu went to the COVID-hit Beijing Olympics as a 16-year-old who despised how skating and endless hours of practice had taken over her life.
A two-year break, a new outlook and a world title later, it’s all new again.
“This time just feels so completely different. I know who I am as a person now,” Liu said after a routine Friday at the Milan Cortina Games which ensured the U.S. stayed at the top of the team event standings on the opening day.
“I have ideas and concepts that I want to share with the world, so I’m happy to be here, versus last time I was kind of like, ‘Let’s get this over with’. Now I want be here and I don’t want this to end.”
The journey back
Liu retired suddenly after placing sixth at the 2022 Olympics and it took two years before she rediscovered a love for skating. In 2025, she became the first U.S. woman to win the world title in 19 years.
Friday’s skate in the short program wasn’t quite at that level and Liu grimaced at one wobbly landing as she placed second behind three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan. Still, it kept the U.S. team in the lead with three of eight programs completed.
Liu draws strength from her American teammates — “that energy is what I crave” — and came up with the nickname “Blade Angels” for herself and the other two U.S. women’s skaters, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito, a mashup of “Blades of Glory” and “Charlie’s Angels.”
Nerves? No chance.
“I don’t know what’s up with me,” she said. “They’re going to actually have to dissect my brain when I’m dead and figure me out.”
New age rule would have kept Liu out
After the 2022 Olympics were overshadowed by a failed doping test for 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva, the rules were changed.
Now skaters must be at least 17 to compete in top-level international events, a measure aimed at ensuring physical and mental health.
Of the nine skaters, all girls, in 2022 who would have been too young to compete under the new rules, Liu is the only one to repeat as an Olympian in 2026.
“Sixteen-year-old me would have loved if I couldn’t go to the Olympics, so I wouldn’t have minded it,” Liu said.
“I think to be on the big stage and in front of so many people, you have to be an adult. It’s so hard on a kid. That comes from experience.”
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AP Winter Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics