Alysa Liu’s Sparkling Mental Health Deserves Its Own Olympic Gold

Team USA figure skating has had a shockingly rough Olympic run. Our “Quad God” psyched himself out, our ice dancers were robbed (don’t argue with me), and our pairs didn’t even make it to the podium. Which means, as always, it’s up to the women.

Tuesday was the women’s short program, and despite the powerhouse trio that is Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn, and Isabeau Levito—aka, the Blade Angels—only Liu (really) remains in the running to win a medal. Levito had a lovely Olympic debut, but is 8th going into Friday’s free skate, and Glenn—a gold-medal favorite, the reigning three-time U.S. champion, and the only U.S. woman landing a triple axel—made a crucial error and finished 12th. She walked off the ice in tears, and microphones picked up her saying, “I had it.” It was more heartbreaking than watching Ilia Malinin blow his entire program because she really did have it, but popped her triple loop into a double, losing a devastating seven points. 

But Liu finished third, behind Japan’s Ami Nakami and Kaori Sakamoto, which means she’s Team USA’s likely last chance to break its women’s figure skating 20-year Olympic medal drought. It’s a ton of pressure, and we’ve already watched pressure break plenty of U.S. figure skaters this Milan Cortina Olympics. But not feeling pressure is Liu’s whole thing now. And watching her skate–especially on Tuesday—you can see her sparkling mental health radiate off her. 

Alysa Liu is pure magic. 🪄

📺 @peacock & @nbc pic.twitter.com/MJSqFRr6eV

— Team USA (@TeamUSA) February 17, 2026

“I don’t know exactly what it is, but I really don’t feel, like, nervous or, like, I don’t feel the pressure,” Liu told NBC Olympics after the short program. “There’s nothing like holding me down, holding me back. I invite it all in. So no matter what happens, like, it’s a story. It’s a story.”

Liu’s story is that, in 2019, she became the youngest-ever U.S. national champion at 13—younger than Tara Lipinski. She was crowned a prodigy and basically became a minor celebrity, even going on Jimmy Fallon. But after finishing sixth in the 2022 Beijing Winter Games and winning bronze at the 2022 World Figure Skating Championship, she retired at 16 and went on to live what she called a “normal, teenage-girl, older-sister life,” like going to UCLA and hiking to Mount Everest base camp. So norm.

“Heyyyyy so I’m here to announce that I am retiring from skating,” Liu wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post. “I started skating when I was 5 so that’s about 11 years on the ice and it’s been an insane 11 years. A lot of good and a lot of bad but (you know) that’s just how it is. I’ve made so many friends, and so so sooo many good memories that I’ll have for the rest of my life.” Girlfriend was burned the fuck out. 

But legend has it that she went on a ski trip with friends and realized how deeply she missed competition, so she casually returned in March 2024 and then won the 2025 World Championships at 19. 

“I had no art to show before. People were making me skate to this [music], putting me in that dress, I had no control,” Liu told ESPN in the fall. “I didn’t even know who was making the decisions and I didn’t want to be there anyways. … The vibes are so different now. The way I was being treated before is a lot different than I am now.” Now she has halo-striped hair, a frenulum piercing, and, at least for the short program, ditched the typically bedazzled costumes for an ethereal gem-less dress. Even as a [REDACTED]-year-old who considers herself relatively well-adjusted, I’ll admit I’m completely inspired by her clarity and how fully she’s inhabited herself. 

She skates her short program to “Promise” by Laufey, a haunting and fitting piano ballad about struggling to let go of a long-term love. And while she’s always been lauded as a graceful and artistic skater, watching her skate on Tuesday was an otherworldly experience, in which we briefly entered a parallel universe where our relationships are healthy, our skin clear, and our anxieties a far and distant memory.

I can go on. It was like watching a rock skip endlessly across a glittering lake or a pair of scissors glide effortlessly across a sheet of gold wrapping paper—a visual ASMR feast. My brain? At ease. My soul? Cleansed.

“I connected with my program (today) on another level compared to the rest of the season,” she said, and scored an all-time personal best with 76.59. She got a small penalty on her triple loop, but attacked her triple Lutz-triple loop combination—the most difficult combination of any of the competitors—and landed it like it was the only thing she was put on Earth to do. 

NBC commentators (and former Olympians) Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski were also both spellbound by her performance, with Weir saying, “it’s like she skates on a cloud,” and Lipinski saying how she skates with “such freedom and lightness.” 

I want to say that I hope that lightness will float her right to the top of the Olympic podium on Thursday, but I know she doesn’t care either way, soooooo, I guess she’s already won. 

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