The Alysa Liu Effect: How A 20 Year Old Became A Gen Z Icon

Not sure if I will ever recover from Alysa Liu hitting the Zara Larsson 'Boots' on ice. But here's the thing, that's the whole point.

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Liu is 20 years old. She is a double Olympic gold medallist, a World Champion, and a UCLA psychology student who practices at the Oakland Ice Centre to a playlist of whatever she feels like that day.

She has a black cat named Sesame. She threw out the first pitch at a St. Louis Cardinals game with a double Axel. She is, in every sense of the word, that girl, and she could not care less whether you think so or not.

That last part? That's the allure.

From Prodigy To Burnt Out To Back Again (And Better)

The origin story matters, but not for the reasons sports media usually insists on. Liu was born in Clovis, California, in 2005 — the same year Kimmie Meissner became the last American woman to win a world title before Liu reclaimed it nearly two decades later. Her father, a Michelle Kwan devotee, brought her to the rink at five. What happened next was less a development than a detonation.

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By her early teens, Liu wasn’t just winning, she was rewriting what was considered possible in women’s skating. Triple Axels. Quadruple jumps. National titles before most kids had teenage problems to complain about. She reached the 2022 Winter Olympics at 16, placed sixth, and podiumed at Worlds weeks later.

And then she walked away.

At an age when most athletes are being told to “push through,” Liu admitted she hated skating at the Olympics. Burnout wasn’t a rumour; it was the headline. Prodigy culture had done what it does best, extract excellence early and leave very little room to exist as a person. So she stopped. Fully. No rebrand. No “mental health break” press cycle. Just absence.

What followed is why this story isn’t about comeback narratives, it’s about autonomy.

The Comeback That No One Saw Coming

During her hiatus, Liu climbed to Everest Base Camp, went to college, took photographs, lived like someone with nothing to prove. Then a friend suggested, casually, on a ski trip, that she return to skating.

Not a coach. Not a federation. Not nostalgia or medals. A friend.

When Liu came back, it was on her terms. She chose her music, her costumes, her aesthetic. She returned to Oakland, not as the system’s pawn, but as an artist with boundaries. Less than a year later, she won the women’s singles world title at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, the first American to do so since 2006. The year she was born.

At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, she won two gold medals. Effortlessly. Almost suspiciously calmly.

Where The Alysa Liu Effect Actually Lives

Here is where the Alysa Liu Effect really lives.

At the Olympics, the world didn't just notice that she won. They noticed how she won. There were no white-knuckled nerves, no manufactured intensity. She was genuinely, radiantly, almost annoyingly calm, the kind of calm that doesn't come from suppressing something, but from having made peace with all of it.

"I really don't feel nervous. I don't feel the pressure. Nothing is holding me down or holding me back," she said after her short programme in Milan. "I invite it all in. So, no matter what happens, it's a story."

And suddenly, everything became a moment. The unplanned hair flips. The playlists. The dazed, joyful smile. The halo hair (I am obsessed). The unapologetically sparkly costumes. Even her comfort with walking away from the thing she was once told should matter more than anything else. None of it felt engineered. That was the point.

While others visibly buckled under Olympic pressure, Liu was having the time of her life, not because the stakes didn’t matter, but because she’d already done the internal work to know they weren’t everything. She’s been clear that she sees herself as an artist first, an athlete second, and that results matter less than how she feels while performing. ''I didn’t need an Olympic gold medal to validate my decisions,'' she said. ''I just made those decisions because I knew I had to, no matter the outcome.''

She won the gold anyway. Twice..

The "Alysa Liu Core" Era

Social media, as it does, clocked all of it immediately. ''Alysa Liu core'' emerged as shorthand for an unbothered, self-directed aesthetic. Celebrities like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez were publicly rooting for her. Rare consensus, achieved.

Her short programme skated to Laufey’s “Promise.” Her free skate to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park.” Safe choices were never on the table. She trains in the Bay, reps the Bay, and says it plainly: this is home.

Oakland's Fenton's Creamery announced it has ice cream for life. Honestly, correct.

What The Effect Actually Is

The Alysa Liu Effect isn't really about figure skating, though the skating is extraordinary. It's about what happens when a person, any person, stops performing for a system and starts performing for themselves.

She burnt out. She left. She figured out who she actually was outside of the sport. She came back with something the first version of her couldn't have had: genuine joy. And genuine joy, it turns out, is technically superior to fear-motivated excellence, because "for me, my balance is my social life, skating and school. I think it's crucial because we are humans before being athletes."

That's not a motivational poster. That's the thesis. That's the thing.

When asked what she's manifesting for the rest of the year, Liu said: "Calmness. Tons of downtime with friends and family, and just to keep doing what I love to do." She is an Olympic champion. She went to Everest Base Camp. She studies psychology. She has a cat named Sesame. She is twenty years old, and she has already lived several lives, mostly on her own terms, and the world has rewarded her extravagantly for it.

The effect is simple, actually. It's what peak happiness looks like, on the ice, and off it. And once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. Liu competes at the 2026 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague in March. And she will absolutely be fine. Will you?

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