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American figure skating star Alysa Liu has revealed in detail why she decided to withdraw from the upcoming World Championships following her success at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.
In a news conference at her celebratory rally in Oakland on Thursday, Liu said she wanted to go to worlds, but had too many prior commitments.
“I have so many commitments and activities that overlap with the worlds, and I don’t have much time to train either,” Liu said. “So I can’t compete in the world championships. I don’t think I would have had my best performance.”
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Alysa Liu of Team USA performs in the women’s single skate routine during a figure skating exhibition gala on the fifteenth day of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at the Milan Ice Rink on February 21, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Liu also cited the recent wave of “attention” she received after winning gold at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and becoming a social media sensation.
“It’s crazy how much exposure I have right now. I didn’t expect that, especially from a figure skater, that we wouldn’t really explode like that. So, it’s definitely an adjustment,” Liu said. “But it’s just about staying offline.”
Liu’s absence from the world championship roster came just days after she revealed on social media that she had recently been “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 things for me to sign,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “All this in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car, bruh. Please don’t do this to me.”
Liu took temporary retirement shortly after his first Olympic appearance in 2022. His father, Arthur Liu, said it was due to “trauma.”
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Alysa Liu of the United States reacts after competing in the women’s singles free skating final during the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at the Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milan, February 19, 2026. (WANG Zhao / AFP)
“She became really unhappy,” Arthur Liu told USA Today of why she retired. “She avoided the rink at all costs. She’s traumatized. She was just traumatized. She had PTSD and she didn’t want to go near the rink.”
Before her participation in the Beijing 2022 Games, she and her father were the alleged targets of a spy operation by the Chinese government. Liu called the experience “a little weird and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so… incredible. You know what I mean, it’s crazy,” she previously told PK Press Club Digital during a panel discussion at the USOPC Media Summit in October. “Imagine finding that at such a young age, I mean, in a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like on a prank show?’ Like, is this world real. Like, I must be a movie character. But I mean, it felt like it made sense to me, you know, based on everything my dad was doing back when he was an activist.”
Liu made her return to the sport two years later, in 2024. By March 2025, she had already made Team USA history, becoming the first American woman to win the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years.
Then, in February, she made history as the first American to win Olympic gold in a women’s individual figure skating competition since 2002 and the first American to win a medal in this event since 2006.
This historic victory was followed by a huge rise in popularity.
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Alysa Liu of the United States arrives to compete in the women’s figure skating free program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, February 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stéphanie Scarbrough)
Before the Olympics, she had less than 300,000 followers on Instagram. Just a week after the end of the Olympics, it surpassed 5 million. Today, at the time of publication, it has more than 7.7 million.
But fans won’t be able to see her in Prague, as they eagerly await her return to competition.
