Alysa Liu: Olympic Gold medalist, icon and an inspiration to all. She is well-known to the masses and serves as a source of hope for many young adults today. She’s my personal inspiration as well as a phenomenal role model to athletes everywhere.
Since the young age of five years old, Alysa Liu worked hard in competing and dedicated herself to ice skating, which continued unceasingly until she was 16 years old. After placing sixth in the Olympics, teenager Liu drew the line and decided to retire.
Liu has repeatedly described how she felt restricted, controlled and deprived of the social stratosphere which she so deeply loved. She had been home-schooled for the longest time and had to be away from family and friends to focus solely on her training.
As Alysa Liu put it, she found the rink becoming her home because of how long she spent there, and she felt powerless in choosing whether or not she wanted to be there.
This was Liu’s perception of figure skating, not an extracurricular activity she enjoyed, but something she was defined by. Soon, Alysa Liu became “the skater” and lost all sense of autonomy.
When I first learned her story, I was heartbroken in an all too familiar way, as someone so talented lost their love of a sport just because of the pressure others put on her.
When I was younger, I began dancing but wasn’t dedicated to the sport. I was still discovering my love for it and going through the motions. However, after four years, I found my love for the art. I saw a transformation in how I perceived dance class, and I felt excited to go to class and practice without any external push.
Intrinsic motivation is a truly powerful force of nature. It can push any athlete or competitor in the right direction to keep pursuing their sport. Without it, sports may feel like a chore or even suffocating, as was the case in Liu’s situation.
However, the Alysa Liu of 2026 is a brand new individual with a new perspective on figure skating. Liu missed the adrenaline of being on the ice, so she announced her return in March 2024 and won gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Everyone was stunned. I remember watching the performance and feeling the joy of her radiant smile out of my computer screen.
Admittedly, Alysa Liu wasn’t a household name I was very familiar with before 2026, but after seeing her performance, I was drawn to delve deeper into her story. Alysa Liu stepped out of the shadow of her past and her sport to share who she was outside of the rink.
I felt truly inspired by her, and I felt that sometimes walking away is the bravest thing to do. In school, we are taught to keep trying, and our mistakes are proof we are trying — all in the hopes that we will never quit. But do we ever consider that sometimes the best remedy is to take a break and start afresh?
That is the message of Liu’s story. As digital content creator Joe Ando commented, if there was anything Alysa Liu taught us, it’s that distancing yourself from what you love doing can help you realize how much you love doing it.
At the Olympics, Alysa Liu was a winner, and she will continue to be a winner. She inspired the masses with one friendly but much-needed reminder: sometimes leaving is the best thing you can do to keep loving something.
