Alysa Liu competes at her second Olympic Video games with pleasure

How totally different that’s than 4 years in the past, when the outdated Alysa Liu might need most well-liked to skate with the lights off on the 2022 Beijing Olympics, when the game introduced darkness relatively than pleasure to her life, gave her ache relatively than pleasure.

It was all so overwhelming that solely the personal data that she would quickly be retiring at age 16 allowed her to muddle via the Olympics and the next World Championships. Liu had skated greater than respectably in Beijing, then gained a bronze at worlds, however she couldn’t wait to throw her skates into the closet the place they might collect rust for greater than a 12 months.

“I am very happy to be here compared to last time, which was like, ‘Let’s just get it over,’” she mentioned. “This time feels so utterly totally different. I do know who I’m as an individual now.”

More importantly, she has develop into her personal particular person, in search of and buying independence, permitting her to skate on her personal phrases relatively than these set by her father, giving her the company in her profession that had been lacking.

Thus, the raccoon-striped hair impressed by tree rings, the frenulum-piercing in her mouth, the stream-of-Alysa solutions to questions, the insistence on being considered extra as an artist than a medal-seeking competitor, the brief program to a darkly emotive Laufey music, “Promise,” that Liu has made her signature.