Alysa Liu taking season off after Olympic women’s figure skating gold in Milan

Alysa Liu, the American figure skater who won women’s singles gold at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, announced Tuesday she will take the upcoming season off.

In an Instagram post, Liu vowed to return but said she wanted to take time to “recalibrate.”

“While people are announcing programs, imma take this time to announce that I will not be competing this season,” she wrote. “I always want to challenge myself in new ways, so my artistry & skating can evolve. It’s important to me that my sport reflects my personal growth. I’m gonna take the time to recalibrate, fine-tune things & whatnot.”

Liu, who turned 21 this month, dazzled the crowd in Milan in February when she rose from third place to the top of the podium after a rousing free skate set to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park.” The gold medal win was the first at the Olympics for a U.S. woman in 24 years, when Sarah Hughes did it in Salt Lake City in 2002. The victory capped an unlikely rise to the top of the sport for the skater who was once one of the most promising young talents in the world but retired shortly after the 2022 Olympics and missed two seasons.

Liu’s post pledged that she would return again.

“So fear not, I’ll be back,” she wrote, “& in the meantime I’ll be rooting for my teammates near & far.

“See yall soon!!”

In 2019, at 13, Liu became the youngest U.S. national champion ever, then won the title again in 2020, joining Ashley Wagner and Michelle Kwan as the only back-to-back women’s U.S. national champions in the previous 30 years. In 2022, she made the U.S. team for the Beijing Olympics and was the top American in the women’s competition, finishing seventh. She then earned bronze at the 2022 World Championships in March, still just 16 years old.

A month later, though, Liu retired from the sport, saying she had accomplished all she wanted and was ready to move on. She sat out for two seasons before announcing a comeback, returning to competition in October 2024 in a sport that often isn’t kind to comebacks. By March 2025, though, she came to the World Championships in Boston again as a medal contender and won gold.

The next season, Amber Glenn beat Liu at the 2026 U.S. championships — Glenn’s third straight national title, beating Liu for the second straight time — to position the U.S. teammates as two of the top podium contenders for Milan Cortina.

Glenn, though, faltered in the short program in Italy while Liu finished the first segment of the competition behind only Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai. In the free skate, Liu posted her best score of the season, just missing her personal best, to move into the top spot with two skaters to go.

Sakamoto couldn’t beat it. Neither could Nakai. And Liu had her golden moment.

“I think my story is more important than anything,” Liu said then. “To me. That’s what I hold dear, and this journey has been incredible, and my life has just been — I have no complaints. I’m just so grateful for everything.”

Now, she’ll take a hard-earned rest.