A new Alysa Liu steps back into spotlight with stunning short program at figure skating nationals

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A new Alysa Liu steps back into spotlight with stunning short program at figure skating nationals

WICHITA, Kansas – When Alysa Liu called her former coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, about a year ago to say that she wanted to return to competitive skating, he tried to talk her out of it.

He tried so hard that one glass of wine led to another, until DiGuglielmo had put down a whole bottle in a vain two-hour effort to convince her by enumerating all the reasons why coming back would be tortuous, maybe even torturous — and certainly a bad idea.

What he didn’t know then was how much Liu had changed in the time since she had announced her retirement at the end of the 2022 season, when she was plainly sick of skating.

“I wouldn’t ask any elite athlete to take two years off of skating,” DiGuglielmo said Thursday night, after Liu won the short program at the Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships, “but maybe that was what made her this good, because she had time to mature.”

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How Alysa Liu rediscovered figure skating and came out of retirement

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How Alysa Liu rediscovered figure skating and came out of retirement

How did Alysa Liu get to this point, to where she is skating in this weekend’s Budapest Trophy in Hungary, her first real competition in two and a half years?

How and why did she return to the spotlight after purposefully retreating to the shadows, her break from being ALYSA LIU (drum roll) so complete that she also broke from social media, then began posting photos in which alysa liu (whisper) often turned her face from the camera or made it indistinct.

At age 13, Liu had stood the figure skating world on its head. At 16, soon after skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics and winning a bronze medal at the 2022 World Championships, Liu retired from the sport.

She did some post-Olympic shows and did not skate at all for nearly a year and a half. At 19, a sophomore at UCLA, she is competing again.

Talk about things turning upside down.

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It took just two villages to raise L.A. 2024 Olympic hopes

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It took just two villages to raise L.A. 2024 Olympic hopes

Los Angeles has thrown down the gantlet to the International Olympic Committee.

As in: Put up or shut up, IOC members, about all those lofty reformist ideas for economically and logistically saner Olympic Games that you approved by acclamation 14 months ago.

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