2025 after 3 year retirement, 19 yr. old Alysa Liu wins gold at world championship
2 video clips,
3 news articles I think are more noteworthy, they dive into more interesting details
1) washington post - interesting comments from her coach on her samādhi
2) nytimes
3) nbcsports: about Alysa and her dad in Chinese Spy Case. CCP has a history of human rights violations and spying on ex Chinese internationally, often bribing, military force to coerce foreign governments into assisting these illegal activities. Alysa's dad was a protester in Tiananmen square in the 1980's, was a political refugee who settled in Oakland, CA, USA.
9 min video: her winning program to win 2025 world championship:
7 min. vid: her winning short program from two days ago:
7 min. vid: 14 yr old Alyssa from 5 years ago
Interview also has Alyssa's dad Arthur - she gave her gold medal to him
from washingtonpost.com
In a stunner, Alysa Liu completes return to skating with gold at worlds
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2025/03/28/alysa-liu-figure-skating-world-title/
Title is first for an American woman since 2006 and comes less than a year before the Milan-Cortina Olympics.
March 29, 2025
6 min read
Alysa Liu, perhaps surprising even herself, wins the women's title at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston on Friday.
By Les Carpenter
BOSTON — The impossible comeback had become a party now.
A big, raucous disco bash straight from the 1970s with 15,000 people in TD Garden on Friday night clapping to Donna Summer while Alysa Liu was stunning them all, about to win the women’s gold medal at the World Figure Skating Championships.
Down on the ice, she leaped and twirled and landed on her knees.
She wore a gold sequined dress that sparkled in the lights.
All that was missing was a mirrored ball dangling from the ceiling.
It had been 19 years since an American female figure skater had won a world championship, a drought that has become the shame of U.S. figure skating.
With the Milan-Cortina Olympics less than a year away, the United States has been desperate for its next female skating star.
But just months ago no one could have imagined it would be Liu, the 19-year-old college student who had once been America’s great skating hope only to grow to hate the sport and quit not long after the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
The fact it was Liu whose scores kept rising on the top left corner of the arena’s screen is what brought the night to life.
The sullen skater of three years ago came back last summer with an unrestrained joy that spills from her every routine.
As her judging numbers soared past the two leaders, Kaori Sakamoto and Mone Chiba of Japan, and it became clear she was going to win, she threw her head back and laughed because the whole idea of retiring from skating then forging a comeback three years later and winning the world championship seemed absurd.
At the end of her performance, when her final score of 222.97 had been announced and the gold medal assured, someone handed her a microphone and asked her to tell the crowd how she felt.
“Just what the hell,” she said.
And everybody in the stands roared because it seemed just how they thought about it too.
Maybe someday figure skating people will look back on Friday and say it was the night the U.S. women returned to prominence.
In addition to Liu’s gold, Isabeau Levito finished fourth and Amber Glenn was fifth.
It was by far the best American showing at the World Championships in two decades and with the possibility of only one Russian female skater in Milan next year because of Olympic sanctions against the most powerful country in women’s skating, the performances of Liu, Levito and Glenn give hope that maybe the U.S. women can win at an Olympics again.
None of that was important to Liu, however, who alternately basked in her victory and walked around in disbelief.
She said she needed time to process the win, sheepishly admitting that she still could barely believe she had also won the short program here two nights before.
When the gold medal was draped around her neck and the national anthem played, she didn’t weep or shout or dance as the American flag was raised on the opposite side of the rink.
Instead she looked bemused, as if she couldn’t believe this was happening to her.
“I think that’s just how I am and my perspective on life,” she said.
By now, the skating world knows her story well even if it is largely unfamiliar to the rest of the country.
A national champion at 13 and 14, she fell out of love with a sport loaded with pressures and demands, walking away after finishing third at the 2022 worlds, determined to have a normal life.
She enrolled at UCLA.
Only after a random thought on a hike with friends at the end of 2023 inspired her to pick up the old skates back home in Oakland, California, take a few light skates at a local rink and feel the old joy of skating did she her old coaches Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali and express a desire to return.
The hope was to ease into this season, make the world championships and hope to shake off enough rust to really pursue a run at the next Olympics.
DiGuglielmo got a work plan from U.S. Figure Skating, a proposal similar to one used by two-time gold medalist Nathan Chen.
More than anything she needed to get her stamina back after three years of not training.
She did everything they asked.
“She’s a beast on the StairMaster,” DiGuglielmo said.
Then she went to her first competition in the fall in Budapest and won it.
Then she won another in Zagreb and almost won the U.S. nationals.
The worlds though were different.
Nobody had expectations for winning in Boston.
“Top 10 I would have been happy,” DiGuglielmo said standing late Friday night beneath the arena stands.
“A medal would have been good but first?"
His mouth sat agape at the thought.
Long ago he learned Liu wasn’t like other skaters.
She had a different energy about her.
She never rattled.
She rarely had meltdowns.
She had an innate ability to radiate happiness while maintaining an icy focus.
He imagines she would be perfect as a surgeon performing a critical surgery.
“Alysa is not the same as the rest of us, we have doubt, she doesn’t have doubt,” he said.
“It just doesn’t occur to her.”
When she returned, DiGuglielmo and Scali designed programs that matched her personality and station in life;
happy, carefree and loaded with dances because, Scali — who choreographs the routines — says, “Alysa loves to dance.”
He picked Donna Summer for the free skate because he thought her music was perfect for Liu.
“She liked the theme of the freedom,” Scali said.
He found some old videos of Summer from those lost days of the 1970s so Liu could get a feel for the unrestrained happiness of the time, and quickly they recreated it on the ice where months later a sold-out crowd in Summer’s hometown would feel it, too.
Late Friday, after more than an hour of taking photos and exchanging hugs and congratulations and television appearances, Liu was literally pushed from the mob by a U.
S. Figure Skating employee directing her toward a stage in a room beneath the stands where more pictures would be taken and questions asked on a night nobody could still believe.
“Thank you for directing me here,” she said to the employee.
She was laughing.
The employee was laughing.
Everyone was laughing on the night a disco party broke out in the TD Garden and the most unlikely American woman had come to save American women’s figure skating.
==============================================================
nytimes.com
American Alysa Liu, after two years away from figure skating, wins gold at worlds
By Marcus Thompson II|Mar. 28th, 2025
BOSTON — It was once prophesied how Alysa Liu would return glory to U.
S. women’s figure skating.
At 13 years old, she became the youngest woman to win the U.
S. championships, back in 2019. A prodigy was born.
The bubbly girl from Oakland, Calif., with talent larger than her frame and a smile warm enough to soften the ice, was on her way to the top.
In 2020, before the world shut down, she defended her U.S. title.
By 14, she was anointed the future.
But at 15, she finished fourth in the U.S. championships, failing to three-peat.
At 16, while displaying poise beyond her age, she finished sixth in a Beijing Winter Games dominated by the Russians.
Then, following a bronze medal at the world championships, she announced her retirement in April 2022. Burnt out in the pursuit of perfection, she declared her happiness, life outside of skates, was more important.
Shy of three years later, now at 19, Liu is fulfilling the portent she inspired.
On Friday, she captured her first world championship, breaking America’s 19-year gold medal drought.
After a two-plus year retirement from the sport.
“I tried to talk her out of it,” Liu’s coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, said.
“Nobody’s done this.
Nobody walks away and comes back.”
But Liu has come back even better.
Her excellence in both the short program and the free skate likely etches her name in the American contingency for the Winter Olympics in just shy of 11 months.
U.S. Figure Skating can take whichever three women it chooses to Milan, regardless of how they finished in these worlds.
But Liu punctuated her case with a display of her maturation as a woman and a skater.
To come out of retirement, step onto the bright stage of the world championships and perform like she did — so consistently and with a command that felt effortless — repositions her as a candidate for the first American woman to win Olympic singles gold in 24 years.
“What the hell?
What the hell?
What the hell?”
That’s what Liu said was going through her mind when it was over.
Fate tends to feel surreal.
“I never have expectations coming into competitions anymore,” she said.
“It’s more of what I can put out performance-wise, and I really met my expectations on that part today.”
The true essence of what was revealed at TD Garden lies in how the history unfolded.
The grand finale to the women’s singles had the sellout crowd riveted.
Amber Glenn, the American favorite, opened the gauntlet of greatness with a statement performance.
It was a display of defiance.
Having reminded the world she’s mortal with a fall in the short program on Wednesday, Glenn was determined in Friday’s free skate to remind of how she can be otherworldly.
Glenn, the 16th of 24 skaters, reestablished herself as a force for the United States with an emphatic bounce-back performance.
She nailed her elements, delivered the intensity, willed herself back to the skater who’s dominated all year.
She scored a 138.00 on her free skate, vaulting her into first place at the time with a total score of 205.65.
Then, three-time defending world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan one-upped Glenn with an emphatic declaration of her brilliance, after an underwhelming showing in the short program.
She brought the house down with “All that Jazz” from Chicago, dressed in all black to fit the vibe of the popular musical.
She zipped around the rink with the showmanship of a champion, landing triples to the beat and feeding off the arena’s energy.
And when she was done, she let it all out — with yells and fist pumps.
She usurped Glenn at No. 1. A new bar was set:
217.98.
Kaori Sakamoto and Alysa Liu
American Isabeau Levito couldn’t clear it.
After dazzling in her short program, a stunning revelation after a stress fracture in her right foot kept her from the U.S. championships in January, her gold medal hopes evaporated in the opening minute of her free skate.
She tumbled on her opening jump sequence.
The remainder of her routine was as clean as it was elegant.
But the fall dropped her out of gold-medal contention, a reality she acknowledged immediately after her routine with a look of disappointment.
She finished fourth with a score of 209.84.
America’s hopes in its home nation fell to Liu.
The last skater of the night.
She blew them all away.
She owned the moment as it were a birthright.
After stunning in Wednesday’s short program, Liu left no doubt with her free skate, capturing her first world championship gold medal with a score of 222.97. Sakamoto, some five points behind, took silver.
Japan’s Mone Chiba took bronze.
Liu’s readiness only underscored the sense of destiny present.
This was storybook.
The meant-to-be vibes elicited goosebumps.
She never felt that in all her previous years of skating.
“I really don’t think I wanted to do any competition before,” Liu said after her short program.
“Besides not wanting to do it, I definitely wasn’t ready for competitions ever, in my opinion.”
Liu said she chose the music for her routine, “MacArthur Park” by Donna Summer, before she knew the worlds were in Boston, and without knowing Donna Summer was from the area.
Yet, it was perfect enough to feel intentional, the way she landed a triple loop just as the tempo changed in the song.
TD Garden turned up with the music, clapping with the tempo of the late-70s disco song.
Liu’s verve elevated on cue.
“People were standing up at the flying camel,” DiGuglielmo said.
“Why are you clapping at the flying camel?
We have three more major jumping passes.
And a step.
And a choreo.
And a spin.
… You know, it’s not over ’til it’s over.”
When she hit the triple Lutz-double Axel-double toeloop sequence, it was over.
Because it was clear she was in a zone.
Or, as DiGuglielmo said, mustering his best attempt at TikTok lingo, “she was in the klurb.”
Not an ounce of intimidation present.
A coach’s nervousness aside, something unflappable was evident.
A coolness that belied the magnitude.
Her disposition was governed by joy and not by weight.
The confluence of events put this young woman right where she needed to be, to do what she was born to do, and be who she deserved to be.
And she knows this because she chose this.
Such a resounding performance makes it impossible not to reconfigure the landscape of gold medal hopefuls for the Milan Olympics.
How could any prognostication not include the breakout star the world just witnessed?
The 2025 world championships did not include the Russians, who dominate the sport.
It’s still unclear whether they will be allowed to compete in Milan, though their absence from the worlds doesn’t sound promising.
The nation has been barred from international competition since the invasion of Ukraine.
So the time is ripe for America to recapture its legacy of Olympic success.
Liu illustrated she’s game for the challenge, giving the U.S. another hopeful next to Glenn.
Levito, 18, looked largely worthy of a spot as well.
Much of America’s history in women’s figure skating has been elite since Tenley Albright won the States’ first Winter Olympics gold in 1956. It was the first in a stretch of 13 Olympic cycles that saw the U.S. take gold in women’s singles seven times.
Since Albright’s win, the U.S. has also had 11 other skaters win silver or bronze, the last being Sasha Cohen’s silver medal in 2006. Over the 50-year stretch from Albright’s gold to Cohen’s silver, U.S. women won 18 singles medals.
The only other country with more than three medals in that span is Germany, with six.
But it’s been a podium drought for the U.S. in women’s singles over the last four Winter Olympics cycles.
Not in Levito’s lifetime has an American woman medaled in the sport’s biggest event.
Liu enters the mix as a viable candidate to end the drought.
The talent has always been unquestionable.
She has the big-stage experience, which showed up under the ceiling of championship banners at TD Garden.
The peace she declares she found away from the sport suggests she’s mentally prepared for the challenge.
Why can’t she be the first American gold medalist since Sarah Hughes in 2002?
The beauty of what Liu has found is it doesn’t seem to matter whether she wins Olympic gold.
And that liberation is why she can’t be counted out from pulling it off.
She’s free from the consequence of failure and, thus, the confines of limits.
That’s how she skated Friday.
Like one estranged from regret.
Like one fueled by the zeal of authenticity.
Like one who found her purpose, oddly enough, in the same place she left to find it.
The crowd caught the contagion, cheering through her step sequence by Massimo Scali, as Liu leapt and twirled and flung her arms and flashed a smile she couldn’t fake.
Then, picking up speed, she slid across the ice on one knee, leaning back far enough for her hair to sweep the ice.
Now that’s how you slide up on destiny.
=============================================================
www.nbcsports.com
Alysa Liu, father targeted in Chinese spy case
https://www.nbcsports.com/olympics/news/alysa-liu-arthur-dad-father-arthur-justice-department-china
Mar. 17th, 2022
U.S. Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu and her father Arthur Liu – a former political refugee – were among those targeted in a spying operation that the Justice Department alleges was ordered by the Chinese government, the elder Liu said late Wednesday.
Arthur Liu told The Associated Press he had been contacted by the FBI last October, and warned about the scheme just as his 16-year-old daughter was preparing for the Winter Olympics that took place in Beijing in February.
The father said he did not tell his daughter about the issue so as not to scare her or distract her from the competition.
“We believed Alysa had a very good chance of making the Olympic team and truly were very scared,” Arthur Liu said.
The Justice Department earlier Wednesday announced charges against five men accused of acting on behalf of the Chinese government for a series of brazen and wide-ranging schemes to stalk and harass Chinese dissidents in the United States.
Arthur Liu said he and his daughter were included in the criminal complaint as “Dissident 3” and “family member,” respectively.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said he was “not aware of the specifics” surrounding the allegations, but said China is “firmly opposed to the U.
S. slandering by making an issue of this out of thin air.”
“China always asks Chinese citizens to abide by the laws and regulations of host countries, and we would never ask our citizens to engage in activities that violate local laws,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing Thursday.
Liu said he took a stand against China’s bullying by allowing his daughter to compete at the Olympics, where she placed seventh.
“This is her moment.
This is her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete at the Olympic Games.
I’m not going to let them stop her from going and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure she’s safe and I’m willing to make sacrifices so she can enjoy the moment,” Arthur Liu said.
“I’m not going to let them win — to stop me — to silence me from expressing my opinions anywhere.”
The father said he agreed to let his daughter compete with assurances from the State Department and U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee that Alysa Liu would be closely protected and kept safe while competing in China.
They said she would have at least two people escorting her at all times.
“They are probably just trying to intimidate us, to .
.. in a way threaten us not to say anything, to cause trouble to them and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China,” Arthur Liu said.
“I had concerns about her safety.
The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”
Arthur Liu said a man called him in November claiming to be an official with the USOPC, and asked for his and his daughters’ passport numbers.
Arthur Liu refused to provide them and said he would call his contact at Team USA the next day.
“I didn’t feel good about it.
I felt something fishy was going on,” Arthur Liu said.
“From my dealings with the U.S. Figure Skating association, they would never call me on the phone to get copies of our passports.
I really cut it short once I realized what he was asking for.”
The USOPC couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
A spokesman for U.S. Figure Skating deferred comment to Team USA.
Arthur Liu does not remember being approached in person by Matthew Ziburis, who was arrested Tuesday on charges that include conspiring to commit interstate harassment and criminal use of a means of identification.
Ziburis was released on a $500,000 bond.
Prosecutors allege that Ziburis was hired to perform surveillance on the family and pose as a member of an international sports committee to ask Arthur Liu for a copy of his and Alysa Liu’s passports by claiming it was a travel “preparedness check” related to COVID-19. The complaint said when Arthur Liu refused, Ziburis threatened to delay or deny them international travel.
The elder Liu said he left China in his 20s as a political refugee because he had protested the Communist government following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Arthur Liu eventually settled in the Bay Area, put himself through law school and nurtured one of America’s most promising athletes.
His daughter visited their ancestral homeland for the first time while at the Olympics.
Arthur Liu said his daughter has generally been warmly embraced by Chinese fans and media, who considered Alysa Liu to be one of their own.
But through the spying investigation, he learned that China was aware of an Instagram message about human rights violations against the ethnic minority Uyghurs that his daughter once posted.
During the Games, Alysa Liu also told her father that she was approached by a stranger late one night at a cafeteria after the free skate event, and that the man followed her and asked her to come to his apartment.
“I’ve kind of accepted my life to be like this because of what I chose to do in 1989, to speak up against the government.
And I know the Chinese government will extend their long hands into any corner in the world,” Arthur Liu said.
“I’m going to continue to enjoy life and live life as I want to live.
I’m not going to let this push me down and I’m not going to let them succeed.”
China Suppression
https://fullmeasure.news/newest-videos/china-suppression-08-04-2023
by Full Measure StaffSun, August 6th 2023
Original air date:
March 5, 2023
China’s rivalry with the U.S. spans politics, the economy, and even sports.
Today, we have an exceptional story of intrigue about an untold drama happening at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Lisa Fletcher reports it surrounds a U.S. figure skater and her father— who was a Chinese dissident a generation ago.
Arthur Liu says it all began with a suspicious phone call.
In late 2021, his daughter Alysa, a national figure skating champion, was preparing to travel to Beijing, China as the youngest athlete on the U.S. Olympic team.
The call, Arthur Liu says, came from someone who claimed to be from the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Arthur Liu:
He actually called me on the phone, and saying that, "I'm from the U.S. Olympic Committee.
I need your daughter's and your passport copies, and you can fax or, you know, email to this and that."
Lisa:
Did you buy it?
Arthur Liu:
No, I didn't buy it.
I kind of cut him short.
I said, "Okay, I'll take care of it tomorrow."
And tomorrow, I didn't do it.
Liu says the true identity of the caller became more clear when, a short time later, the FBI asked to meet with Liu at a Starbucks coffee shop near his house in late 2021. They said the mystery caller was actually a Chinese government agent.
Lisa:
Can you describe when the FBI came to you about a year ago and told you you were being spied on?
Arthur Liu:
Three agents came, and then they told me, you know, "We are FBI agents.
And we are here to tell you that the Chinese government has sent people to gather your information.
It wasn’t his first encounter with an alleged Chinese spy.
For decades, Liu says he’s been the target of Chinese intimidation for his criticism here in the U.S. of China’s communist regime and his activism decades ago as a student protest-organizer in China.
Lisa :
How does the Chinese government view you?
Arthur Liu:
I was one of the most wanted students in South China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The Tiananmen Square massacre — one of the most infamous days in Chinese communist history.
Tanks and heavily armed troops advanced on students who, for weeks, had been protesting government corruption.
The Chinese military shot or crushed those who got in their way.
Arthur Liu:
And then, after the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4th, we heard about the massacre from radio.
And then we demonstrated even more.
So in Guangzhou, we organized protests and blocked traffic on the bridges, railroads, major public transportation.
We just really wanted to express our anger towards the government.
Lisa:
How risky was that for you?
Arthur Liu:
That was very risky, because in Beijing, the students — thousands of students and residents had been killed.
I think that's why they followed me all the way to America and tried to learn what I was doing, you know, with all the protests.
Since then, such large-scale public demonstrations have been rare in China — which is why many were surprised when thousands of Chinese citizens took to the streets in late November to protest China’s aggressive “Zero Covid” policy, where citizens often were prohibited from leaving their homes.
Following those demonstrations, Chinese authorities agreed to loosen Covid measures, but they also appear to be increasing surveillance, and several protesters have been detained.
Lisa:
How has it changed from 1989 until now, when we're thinking about the tolerance that the Chinese government has for a protest?
Arthur Liu:
It hasn't changed at all.
The government really nowadays has even more tighter control of the people than back 30 years ago.
At that time, we had no phones.
Nowadays, the government completely knows who you are, where you are, what you are doing.
Lisa:
Technology has given them more power.
Arthur Liu:
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Liu escaped China and came to the U.S. as a political refugee shortly after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
Not knowing then, of course, that he would later have a daughter travel to his birth country to participate as a U.
S. athlete in the 2022 Beijing Olympic games.
At age 13, Alysa became the youngest female ever to win a national title, and is the first woman to ever land both a triple axel and quadruple lutz – involving four mid-air rotations – in a single program.
For Arthur Liu, keeping his daughter focused on her Olympic dreams, and keeping her protected, meant keeping his encounter with the FBI a secret.
He asked the agency not to arrest the alleged Chinese government operatives until his daughter’s safe return from Beijing.
Lisa:
What were you afraid of if they made the arrests prior to her coming back?
Arthur Liu:
Well, I was afraid that the Chinese government might take her or hold her as hostage, because she's on Chinese territory.
And you never know who is around her.
You know, you never know who the cleaning lady is for the Olympic Village.
Let's put it that way.
Alysa took seventh place at the Olympics.
Shortly afterward, the justice department announced charges against three alleged operatives, claiming they targeted Arthur Liu and other Chinese dissidents living in the U.
S. One is Chinese and based in China, and has not been arrested.
Another was arrested and released on a $1 million bond.
A third, who admitted in court documents to making the mysterious call to Liu, pleaded guilty in December to two counts of conspiracy.
And like the protesters of 1989 and 2022, Liu says China’s intimidation tactics won’t deter him from showing the world the truth of what's happening there.
Arthur Liu:
I think we all need to stand up for what we believe and stand up against injustice.
Sharyl (on-camera):
Did China ever admit to spying on him?
Lisa:
No.
A Chinese spokesperson last year said the allegations were made out of thin air and accused the U.S. of using it to hype up a "China threat."
Sharyl:
Sounds familiar.
Lisa:
Now, got an interesting footnote on this story though.
Two American employees of the Department of Homeland Security, of all places, were also arrested in this crime.
One of them for allegedly accessing a law enforcement database, getting Arthur and Alysa's passport information, and then giving it to the other person who was arrested, who allegedly passed that information onto the Chinese.
Sharyl:
Homeland Security?
Interesting. Thanks, Lisa.
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