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American figure skating star Alysa Liu revealed in detail why she decided to withdraw from the upcoming World Championships following her successes at the 2026 Cortina Olympics in Milan.
At a news conference at her Oakland festival rally Thursday, Liu said she wanted to go to worlds but had too many prior commitments.
“There are so many commitments I have and activities that overlap with worlds, and I also don’t have much time to train,” Liu said. “So I can’t make worlds. I don’t think I would give my best performance.”
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Alysa Liu of Team United States performs the women’s singles figure skating routine during a figure skating exhibition gala on day fifteen of the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Milan Ice Skating Arena on February 21, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Liu also cited the recent wave of “attention” she has received after winning gold at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and becoming a social media sensation.
“It’s been crazy how much visibility I have right now. I never would have expected us, especially from a figure skater, to not really blow up like that. So definitely an adjustment,” Liu said. “But it’s really just about staying offline.”
Liu’s absence from the World Cup roster came just days after she revealed on social media that she was recently “chased” to her car by a spectator.
“So I land at the airport and there’s a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras and stuff for me to sign,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “Right up in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car brush. Please don’t do that to me.”
Liu went into temporary retirement shortly after her first Olympic appearance in 2022. Her father, Arthur Liu, said it was due to “trauma”.
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Alysa Liu of the United States reacts after competing in the figure skating women’s single free skating final during the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Milan Ice Skating Arena in Milan on February 19, 2026. (WANG Zhao/AFP)
“She became really unhappy,” Arthur Liu told USA Today about why she retired. “She avoided the rink at all costs. She’s traumatized. She was just traumatized. She suffered from PTSD and she wouldn’t go near the rink.”
Before her appearance in the 2022 Beijing Games, she and her father were the alleged ones target of an espionage operation by the Chinese government. Liu called the experience “a little bit freaky and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so … unbelievable. You know what I mean, it’s crazy,” she previously told Pakinomist Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October. “Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, in a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like on a prank show?’ Like, this world is real. I must be a movie character. But I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
Liu returned to the sport just two years later in 2024. By March 2025, she already made history for Team USA, becoming the first American to win at the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years.
Then in February she made history as the first American win Olympic gold in a women’s individual figure skating competition since 2002 and the first American woman to medal at all in the event since 2006.
The historic victory was followed by a massive rise in popularity.
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Alysa Liu of the United States arrives to compete during the women’s free figure skating program at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Before the Olympics, she had less than 300,000 followers on Instagram. Just a week after the Olympics ended, she climbed past 5 million. Now, at the time of publication, she has more than 7.7 million.
But fans won’t be able to see her in Prague as they eagerly await her return to the competition.
