While hiking in the Himalayas in 2023, Alysa Liu and her best friend, Shay Newton, find themselves in the middle of a deep existential debate. Given just that option, would you prefer to return in your next life as a chicken or as a cow?
It was an absurd conversation, Liu admits today, but after seven hours of climbing trails and “squatting and peeing behind rocks,” the two had surpassed a certain limit. Absurdity has become essential.
At that point in the trip to Nepal, they were in reflective mode, learning and sharing all kinds of things with each other. The choice between cow or chicken seemed crucial. Liu argued with conviction that being a cow was not just the right answer — it was the only possible one. Cattle, he argued, walk calmly and eat grass at their own pace, as if the world were a large private trough.
“The chickens I saw are hidden behind bars,” he explained recently. “Yeah, no thanks. I think my chances of being reborn as a cow on the hill might be a lot better. There are too many chickens out there, you know what I mean?”
Liu, in fact, was once one of them.
For much of his childhood, he lived inside a gilded cage. At age 10, he competed in the Central Pacific Regionals; At 13, she won the United States National Championship, becoming the youngest champion in history. He defended the title the following year and, at 16, represented the country at the Beijing Olympic Games. She finished in seventh place, but months later won bronze at the World Championships — only the second American to reach the podium since 2006.
Then, Liu came out of the cage.
Two weeks after leaving the ice at the World Cup, he announced his retirement. It was living the life I felt I had lost. There were extraordinary experiences, like hiking in the Himalayas, but it was the ordinary things that she valued most: trips to buy cat food that turned into visits to a gaming cafe an hour from home, bad karaoke, art classes, psychology courses in college, driver’s license, shell hunting, zip lining, dorm life, oversleeping, dying your hair, getting piercings — a complete immersion in discovering who you were beyond the demands of sport.
She made good and bad decisions, but they were all hers.
“I thought the only way to try other things was to leave, because I felt trapped and stagnant. In my head, the only way to free myself was to leave the sport,” she said. “And it worked.”
This month, Liu will be part of a U.S. women’s team that carries the country’s highest Olympic hopes in decades. But when you enter the Milano Ice Skating Arena for the short program, it will no longer be from inside a cage.
will skate free.
From precocity to the world podium
It’s hard to imagine that anything could contain the 20-year-old. At the Olympic media meeting in October, while other athletes wore impeccable Team USA uniforms, Liu appeared in a blue t-shirt that she had customized in the early hours of the morning, uncomfortable with the “basic” cut of the piece. “I can’t change the color, but I can change the shape,” he explained. “So I thought: it changes everything.”
“Change everything” seems to sum up his trajectory. An unexpected variation on a sport with predictable movements; a free stroke between millimetrically drawn lines.
Liu began skating at the age of five, encouraged by her father, Arthur, a political activist who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests before settling in California. With no experience in the sport, he enrolled her in classes following Michelle Kwan’s success. When he noticed natural talent, he invested in private coaches.
At 13 years old, 1.40 m tall, he won the national championship by landing two triple axels. For a country in need of a new ice princess, she was “hope”, as Tara Lipinski defined it at the time.
But “hope” did not always feel control over her own dream. with songs chosen by technicians, dressed in costumes designed by others, and swapped regular school for homeschooling. He was lonely — and he conflicted with someone who says they “can’t live without fun.”
The pandemic came. At the age of 15, with the track closed, he discovered that he didn’t miss the rigid routine so much. When he returned, after a stretch that made previously natural jumps difficult, he placed fourth in the 2021 nationals.
In the run-up to the Beijing Games, the FBI warned the family about Chinese espionage threats related to the father’s activism. Liu describes the situation as “kind of scary and exciting. So unbelievable it’s like a movie.” Still, he competed. She was seventh at the Olympics and, weeks later, bronze at the World Championships.
When everything indicated the peak, she stopped.
Return on your own terms
Three years later, he returned. This time, on your terms. He chose songs, gave his opinion on the choreography, decided what to wear. Train when you feel necessary. Without the suffocating weight of expectation, he began to embrace artistic expression.
“It’s an art form,” he says. “I like the technical part, the spins, the jumps, being an athlete. But it’s also art.”
At the 2025 World Cup, he closed the competition to the sound of “MacArthur Park”, by Donna Summer, and won the USA’s first gold in almost two decades.
In Milan, alongside Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito, she will try to end another Olympic drought — the country has not won the women’s singles since 2002.
Liu is aiming for gold, but when asked what she is most looking forward to in Italy, she is excited about something else: the exhibition gala, an Olympic tradition in which medalists present programs without judgment, without restrictions.
Free, at last, from their golden cages.
