Figure skater Alysa Liu: This Olympic champion embodies a whole technology | EUROtoday

She is taken into account rebellious, self-determined and unconventional. US determine skater Alysa Liu doesn’t match the standard picture of an expert determine skater – neither on the ice nor off it. Neither visually nor artistically. But one factor is just not debatable: their capacity.

Less than two years after her comeback, the 20-year-old was topped Olympic champion with a flawless free skate on the Winter Games in Italy. Liu improved from third to first place after the free program.

The Japanese Kaori Sakamoto got here second forward of her teammate Ami Nakai, who celebrated her Olympic debut on the age of 17. For Sakamoto, who gained bronze 4 years in the past, the looks in Italy was a farewell to the Olympic stage. She ended her profession after the season.

But Liu stole the present from the 2 Asian girls. She is the primary American Olympic girls’s determine skating champion since Sarah Hughes in Salt Lake City in 2002. “It was so nice to see her joy, her light-heartedness. She showed her jumps with great confidence,” mentioned two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt on ARD. “It was very good competition, not a fall festival like the men’s.”

In 2022, Liu surprisingly determined to not proceed her profession, which was all the time accompanied by her father. She felt managed by others, compelled right into a corset and patronized. She lacked freedom and in addition disliked the widely accepted supreme of magnificence in her sport. Eating issues weren’t a sacrifice she would make. She was 16 years outdated on the time – and ended her profession earlier than it had even actually begun.

It was equally stunning that she got here again – albeit below her personal circumstances. “She came up to me in my office and said, ‘I have very important news: I want to skate again,'” her father, lawyer Arthur Liu, advised the New York Times: “And then she told me that I wouldn’t be there at all anymore, that I wasn’t part of the team anymore.” With tears in his eyes, he added: “I have to be honest, that hurt.”

But his daughter had acknowledged what she wanted: She needed to determine for herself how and when she educated, needed to have a say within the selection of music and the selection of her competitors garments. Since then, her father advised the New York Times he realized that to ensure that Alysa to return to the game, he must let her go.

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“I really couldn’t blame her for wanting to go her own way,” mentioned Liu Sr., who got here to the United States as a political refugee greater than 35 years in the past after organizing scholar protests throughout the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in China. “We are both very freedom-loving.”

So his daughter returned for the 2024/2025 season and have become world champion right away. With her braveness and self-determination, she is going to function a job mannequin and inspiration to many. In the nonetheless staid, conservative determine skating world, she is a colourful aspect amidst many ice dolls together with her generally streaky, generally layered coloured hair and facial piercings. She stands for modernity and emancipation and thus embodies the brand new technology.

From now on she does this as an Olympic champion. She aptly describes the truth that in the meanwhile of her triumph she was first busy calming down the utterly overwhelmed bronze medalist Ami Nakai earlier than she was blissful about her personal title. Liu does not wish to take success or failure personally, and it’s exactly this lack of doggedness that provides her great lightness on the ice. Liu, who’s visually paying homage to the musician Billie Eilish, is above all having enjoyable.

Amber Glenn improves to fifth place

At least that was the case on Thursday night for the American champion Amber Glenn, who made a severe mistake within the quick program and improved from thirteenth to fifth place together with her great free skate. Despite the third finest freestyle, it wasn’t sufficient for a medal.

There was no runner for Germany, however an athlete born in Germany took half anyway. Julia Sauter, who competed for Romania, took seventeenth place. When she was 15 years outdated, she was faraway from the squad in Germany as a result of she could not do two totally different triple jumps. In the freestyle she jumped a complete of six triple jumps, 4 of which had been totally different.

“I support our German runners, I live in Germany. I love our German couples and I cheer them on just as much, but for my career it is the country of Romania,” mentioned Sauter, who was born in Baden-Württemberg.