Alysa Liu

Alysa Liu (born August 8, 2005) is an American competitive figure skater.

She is the 2022 World bronze medalist, the 2021 CS Nebelhorn Trophy champion, the 2021 CS Lombardia Trophy champion, and a two-time U.S. national champion (2019, 2020).

At age 16, she competed in the 2022 Winter Olympics, placing seventh.

Alysa Liu was born on August 8, 2005, in Clovis, California, the oldest child of Arthur Liu, an attorney who immigrated to the U.S. from a small mountain village in Sichuan, China, in the 1990s at the age of 25, after earning degrees in China.

He was further educated in California, earning M.B.A. and J.D. degrees.

Liu is the oldest of five children; like her siblings (a sister, Selina, and triplets Joshua, Justin, and Julia), she was conceived through an anonymous egg donor and a surrogate mother.

At the time of Liu's birth, her father was still married to Yan "Mary" Qingxin, whom Liu and her siblings refer to as their mom and who acts as their legal guardian, even after her divorce from Arthur.

Liu was considered the frontrunner female recruitment prospect for China as a part of its "naturalization project" to recruit overseas athletes in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

Her father, however, would not be persuaded.

In March 2022, it was reported that Liu and her father (who had left China as a political refugee following his participation in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989) had been targeted in November 2021 by spies allegedly under direction of the Chinese government, in an operation to collect private information on Chinese political dissidents living in the United States.

One spy posed as a U.S. Olympic Committee official and requested copies of their passports.

Her father stated that the scheme was likely designed to "intimidate" him and to "silence" him from "say[ing] anything political or related to human rights violations in China"; he added that he was concerned for his daughter's safety while she was in Beijing but he agreed to let her compete after receiving assurances that the U.S. State Department would take additional precautions to protect her.

Liu began skating at age five when her father, a fan of Michelle Kwan, brought her to the Oakland Ice Center.

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.

Laura Lipetsky began teaching Liu at the age of 5½ years old, and Liu's first choreographer, Cindy Stuart, also started working with Liu when she was young.

She is also the first woman to win the junior and senior titles back-to-back since Mirai Nagasu in 2008.

An accomplished jumper, Liu was the first American junior women's singles skater to successfully complete a triple Axel in international competition, the first American woman to land a quadruple jump, the first woman to complete both a quadruple jump and triple Axel in the same program, and the first woman to land a triple Axel triple in combination with a triple toe loop in the short program.

Liu is the first woman to win two consecutive U.S. titles since Ashley Wagner in 2012 and 2013.

As a juvenile in 2015, Liu came in seventh place at the Central Pacific Regionals.

At the 2016 U.S. Championships, 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.

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, almost 18 more than silver medalist Pooja Kalyan, and the second highest-ever score on the junior level.

Despite winning the gold, 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 Hanna Yoshida of Japan.

In August 2018, Liu competed as a novice at the 2018 Asian Open Trophy in Bangkok, Thailand.

In 2019, Liu was named to the inaugural Time 100 Next list.

At the junior level, Liu is 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.

Liu became the youngest-ever U.S. women's national champion when she won her first title at age 13.

A year later, at 14 years old, she became the youngest skater to win two senior national titles.