Alysa Liu’s defining Olympic night and a shine that bucks her sport’s expectations
· Yahoo Sports
MILAN — The gold Alysa Liu seemed to care most about was her dress. She couldn’t wait to show off the custom sleeveless costume covered in shimmering sequins. It sparkled like a strobe light under this Olympic fluorescence.
That’s what she wanted. To shimmer. To illuminate. After all it took her to get on this platform, shining only made sense. Big stages command matching swag. Epic moments call for appropriate moxy. So Liu flexed by wearing gold. Not as a prediction of her success, but as an outward illustration of her inner glow.
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“I don’t need this,” she said, cupping the gold medal dangling around her neck. “But what I needed was a stage, and I got that. So I was all good, no matter what. If I fell on every jump, I would still be wearing this dress, so it’s all good.”
Turned out all that glittered was definitely gold.
Because the most luminous element on display at the Olympic women’s figure skating finale proved to be Liu herself. Not the dress. Not the bright lights on her podium. Not her stellar competitors. But the 20-year-old representing Oakland, Calif., whose effervescence intoxicates arenas, wafts through screens and infects millions of viewers.
Liu’s defining night didn’t captivate because she won, but in how she claimed the triumph. On the same stage Thursday night where some of the best faltered, Liu didn’t come close to so much as a wobble. In a free skate program she’s used for two straight seasons, her execution looked second nature. Tension had swept through the Milano Ice Skating Arena like an aroma as other competitors took turns. But her hakuna matata aura overwhelmed it, making it impossible not to catch her vibe. She grooved to “MacArthur Park” by Donna Summers, rocking her metallic dress and smiling as if the refund check hit.
She posted a score of 150.20 and the best in the Olympics couldn’t catch up to her total of 226.79. The closest rivals were the silver medalist Kaori Sakamoto and the bronze medalist Ami Nakai, both of Japan.
And Liu clinched gold without a triple axel, thriving on sheer edge mastery and emotive expertise.
“Joy is her brand,” her coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said. “She pulls people out onto the ice with her and you experience that with her.”
Doubt didn’t stand a chance. Where skaters felt pressure, she bubbled with joy. While others stressed, she strutted. When it’s time to really shine, Liu doesn’t pop jumps, she pops her collar.
In that way, her performance was an homage to where she’s from and what she’s been through. Bay Area ethos groomed her understanding of confidence. Of greatness. Of value. So Liu knows. It ain’t on you, it’s in you. And if ain’t in you, it doesn’t matter what’s on you.
“I’m just glad,” she said, “that I could bring Oakland to Milan.”
She became the new face of her sport after that performance, which delivered the United States its first Olympic championship in women’s figure skating since Sarah Hughes in 2002. It had been 20 years since an American woman won any individual figure skating medal at the Olympics.
Figure skating gold medalists in the U.S., and indeed in many other countries, elevate into royalesque figures. That’s why what happened Thursday at the Milano Ice Skating Arena carried such historical and cultural significance. A watershed moment in the sport.
Her exhortation as she exited the ice following her free skate made that clear. “That’s what the f— I’m talking about,” she yelled into the camera.
Somewhere, Marshawn Lynch smiled.
Indeed, Liu’s reign promises a new precedent and ushers in a perspective that clashes in some ways with her beloved sport. But so be it.
She became this figure by following a code she can’t wait to share. So it stands to reason her ambassadorship promotes those same principles.
Mental health over medals. Independence over expectations. People over talent. Celebratin’ instead of hatin’ and joy instead of jealousy. And family — biological, adopted, chosen — over everything.
People will follow because her story relates beyond the pristine facade of figure skating. Her presence promotes diversity. Her peak beginning at 20 years old, in a sport where puberty can conflict with success, violates the expected lifespan of skaters. Her rigid independence indirectly empowers fellow contenders.
“I know what this could mean for figure skating in the United States,” DiGuglielmo said. “There’s gonna be so many little kids showing up for little learn-to-skate programs everywhere in the country because of Alysa. You know, in 1976, Dorothy Hamill won, and she made that haircut famous.”
Young women across America ran to salons and asked for Hamill’s bouncy angled bob haircut known as a “wedge” following her gold medal performance at the Innsbruck Olympics in Austria. Hamill wound up with a shampoo endorsement deal with Clairol.
But Liu doesn’t want little girls dying halos into their hair. Not per se, though she’d be flattered by imitation of her artistry.
She wants them to tell their story. She wants them to believe in themselves. She wants them to reject some of figure skating’s restrictive traditions regarding age, gender, beauty and regality.
“(Do) stuff that people tell you you shouldn’t do,” Liu said of her message. “I’ve been doing a lot of that. You also have to find a good team. I’m so grateful to find such great support around me. My friends really hold me down. So that, no matter what happens in my life, I think I have a beautiful life story, and I feel really lucky.”
The Oakland Ice Center looks every bit of 31 years old. Operated by the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, it sits a short walk from the action of Telegraph Avenue, the heart of Uptown. Its two rinks — one NHL sized, one Olympic sized — feature accent marks from years of youth hockey and skating collisions giving it character. The dust on the walls and the baseboards, chipped paint and treaded carpet give it a lived-in feel.
This isn’t a glamorous facility. Not the kind one would expect to produce an Olympic champion. But in many ways, it’s the perfect home for Liu and the message she’s sending.
“Oakland’s scrappy, right?” DiGuglielmo said. “And, like, she owns that.”
It fits with her bubbliness, the unshakeable confidence. Her city owns a reputation for being its own universe, with its own style and lingo, and a fervent love for itself.
In her city, reputed more for its startling statistics than a parade of success stories, swag is simultaneously inherent and earned. It springs as if from a geyser within, both as a proclamation of intrinsic worth and a rebuttal to any infringement.
Her talent made her a prodigy who carried Olympic expectations. Her personality can shine because of her elite ability.
And Liu’s style bears the influence of Bay Area diversity. Its confluence of cultures. Its junction of affluence and affliction. Its harmony of art and culture and technology and politics. Its legacy of hustle, evident from the slums to Silicon Valley, from the hills to the ‘hood.
And Liu is ingrained in that culture. She lives in a part of town that might scare the unaffiliated. At the same time, her world exists in a radius of fervent energy and community. Her rink is near her former school, Oakland School for the Arts, a creative educational hub that produced the likes of Zendaya and Kehlani. Liu and her coaches’ pre- and post-practice coffee spot, Kinfolx, is an oft-crowded Black-owned work space that converts into an event space when the sun sets.
It’s a few blocks from the Paramount Theatre, where in 2008 Donna Summers at 60 years old ripped a concert that people still remember.
And like a true Bay Area kid, her connections span all over the region. From San Francisco to Richmond. From Albany to San Jose. Liu and fellow Winter Olympic medalist and San Francisco native Eileen Gu go way back, the Chinese-American community connecting them as adolescents. Liu’s father, Arthur, moved to the U.S. as a political refugee after speaking out against the government following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
That she’d walk away from figure skating in a blink, as she did at age 16 before a return two years later, makes sense considering her origins and her background.
“I 100% believe that if she had not stepped away she would not be here right now,” DiGuglielmo said. “And not just stepping away. I mean she shut the door. Like, shut the door. But I think during that break, her body got healthier. By going to UCLA, taking all the classes that she did for the year, her mind was sparked. All those things that make you into the person that you are.”
This is figure skating’s new superstar and the impetus for a new era of figure skating, launched by a Bay Area kid who hip-hop dances on TikTok, pierced her own gums, wars with punctuality and loves a pair of baggy jeans. She livens fellowship with hilarity, wild declarations and unbridled takes. Because, as her U.S. teammate Isabeau Levito once revealed at a news conference, Liu likes to “keep the hoes on their toes.”
Liu understands who she is well before self-discovery tends to happen. She can’t legally purchase alcohol in the States, but she knows what she values in this world. She’s found freedom while being a young adult in an era of social media, which can operate as a predatory arm of forces manipulating minds. She’s choreographed peace in a sport that attacks it in its athletes. With its miniscule margin for error. With its relentlessly discerning eyes. With every tenth of a point.
With a gold medal on the line, with history in her grasp, with potential crushing disappointment looming, Liu wasn’t fazed. She danced on blades as if no one was watching, because she knew everyone was watching.
“I say it all the time,” DiGuglielmo said. She’s not like us.”
And when that’s in you, may as well put it on you. So Liu commissioned the perfect dress for her perfect moment. Like her defining night, it was hella gold.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Olympics, Women's Olympics
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