Alysa Liu Won Olympic Gold, But She Would’ve Been Fine Either Way

Now Liu is ready to take on a world that quickly fell in love with her quirky style, otherworldly talent, and, most notably, her relentless joy. Whether she won Olympic gold or not—she did…twice—she was going to have a good time, because Liu skates for something you can’t get from an accolade; something that comes from passion for her sport and love of herself, her music, her style, her art, and all of it on her own terms.

“I would’ve been fine either way,” Liu says of winning Olympic gold. “I would’ve been loving life outside of skating just as much. But yeah, I’m really happy with how my life is right now.”

Despite the way Liu presents herself, most people wouldn’t consider her day-to-day existence to be totally normal. She’s been running around the country carrying two surprisingly heavy gold medals in a strawberry-patterned nylon grocery bag, meeting celebrities like Daniel Radcliffe, making appearances on what seems like every television network in America, and handling it all like she’s just won a game of pickup basketball, not Olympic figure skating.

Perhaps that apparent ease is because working hard is actually Liu’s baseline. “I love pushing myself,” she says. “There’s this thing called the aMCC in your brain, and it’s where you say willpower resides. I love doing stuff that I really don’t want to do, really hard things. I get a kick out of it, and that’s where I’m happy.”

She doesn’t see the obligations or attention as pressure; she sees it as another opportunity to be herself. Like many other athletes in 2026, especially those representing the United States on the world stage, Liu has been asked to address the country’s political climate. For her, a second-generation daughter of a Chinese immigrant, sharing her story is her most powerful response. “I think storytelling promotes and spreads empathy,” she says. “Some people picked up on it.”

Her father, Arthur Liu, is an activist who fled China after his involvement during the time of the 1989 Tiananmen Square-era protests. “My father has a backbone, and so I have it too. He is independent, and he speaks up, and he raised us to do the same,” Alysa says. She has been clear about her stance on major issues, such as immigration in the US, and she has protested and spoken out in the past. This is in line with how she has managed everything in her life, speaking up for herself and what she believes in. “We even talk back to him,” Liu says, referring to how she and her four younger siblings interact with their dad, “but that’s his fault. He raised us that way. So he’s proud of that, and I am too.”