After competing in the 2022 Beijing Olympics and winning a bronze medal at the World Cup that winter, 16-year-old Alya Liu went from ice skating, worn from the sport.
Turns out it was a longer break instead.
Now 19, LiU covered his return to ice skating at the Boston World Cup and won the woman’s singles as skating at the end of Friday. Her dazzling free-skate routine to Boston native Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” left a happy crowd that stood and cheered and left a liu-appropriate way a shimmering gold dress-with expression that extended from joy to distrust.
She became the first American woman to stand on top of the podium at the event since Kimmie Meissner in 2006.
“I’m not going to lie, this is a crazy story,” Liu said at NBC Sports. “I don’t know how I came back to become a world champion.”
LiU landed seven triple jumps and received positive execution results on all 12 of her technical elements. The eighth seed that participated in the competition, Lius free skates at 148.39 crushed his season’s best brand with almost 17 points.
“This means so much to me,” said Liu, from Oakland, Calif. “Everything I’ve gone through – my time away and all this. This time I’m so happy.”
She won the national championship at the age of 13 and was the next brilliant hope for us women’s figure skating. Gone were the days with lots of medals that won by those like Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski, Michelle Kwan and Sarah Hughes, and when Liu retired from burnout the hope.
Now she could lead an American team into the Olympics next winter with a chance for the first gold medal of an American woman since Hughes reached the urgency in Salt Lake City in 2002.
Isabeau Levito, who goes out of New Jersey, and Amber Glenn from Dallas ended up in the fourth and fifth respectively. Levito won the silver medal at the 2024 worlds, and Glenn is the twice reigning American champion.
Kaori Sakamoto and Money Chiba, who ended with the silver and bronze medals, were both from Japan.
-Field level media
