Alice Liu, winner of the 2026 Olympic Games in figure skating. Biography

On Thursday, February 19, the women's single figure skating tournament ended in Italy. American figure skater Alice Liu won the gold medal after the free skate at the Olympic Games. The victory was the result of the athlete's return to big-time sports after a pause in her career and a successful Olympic season in 2025-2026. For more information, see the Izvestia article.

Biography: childhood and family

Alice Liu was born on August 8, 2005 in Clovis, California, USA. The future champion spent her childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area.: Lew grew up in Richmond, California. It is there that her first ice rink is located and the very first training sessions were held.

Alice was raised in Richmond, and her father, Arthur Liu, emigrated from China. Alice and her younger siblings were born thanks to surrogacy. Lew is the eldest of five children.

Getting started in sports

According to the official profile of the International Skating Union (ISU), Liu started skating in 2010. The first training sessions were held in California. At the junior level, the athlete quickly stood out for her stable jumping technique and early mastery of complex elements.

The key factor at the start was the "learning rate": The American figure skating school traditionally closely monitors those who quickly go through the stages from single to double and then to triple jumps. Lew's acceleration was rapid, so much so that as a teenager she became one of the main hopes of U.S. sports.

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In 2019, she won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, becoming one of the youngest national champions in the history of the tournament. In 2020, she repeated this result and defended the title.

On the international stage, Lew competed in the ISU Junior Grand Prix series, where she won the stages and finals. Later, she moved to the adult level and represented the United States at the World Championships and Grand Prix tournaments.

Career pause

At the age of 16, Lew announced her retirement from sports. In a brief message on social media, she indicated that she intends to pay more attention to family and friends, as well as focus on education.

The athlete's father, Arthur Liu, in turn, stated that the decision was related, among other things, to security issues. According to him, during the Olympic Games, the figure skater faced harassment: an unknown man stood guard and followed her, insisting on a personal meeting at his home, despite the fact that the American athlete was accompanied by FBI officers.

"I lived everywhere except at home for a while, and I hated figure skating. All I wanted was to be at home with my family and friends and live like an ordinary teenage girl. It seemed to me that I was skipping all this for the sake of a figure skating career that I wasn't interested in at all. I had no dream of my own, except to be at home," Sport—Express quotes the figure skater as saying.

After retiring from big-time sports, Liu lived outside the competitive schedule for a year: she got a driver's license, spent time with friends, attended concerts, helped her family by picking up younger relatives from school, and went on a trip to the Himalayas.

In 2024, Lew returned to training and competing, and in the 2025/26 Olympic season, she joined the U.S. national team for the Games in Italy.

Victory at the Olympic Games-2026

The Olympic Figure Skating Tournament was held as part of the 2026 Winter Olympics. According to the sum of the two programs, Alice Liu won, scoring 226.79 points. The second place was taken by Kaori Sakamoto with a score of 224.90 points, the third was Ami Nakai, who received 219.16 points.

In the short program, Liu showed the third result — 76.59 points. The technical score was 41.34 points, the program components were 35.25, and there were no penalty points. The rental includes a triple flip, a double axel and a triple lutz —triple Rittberger cascade.

In addition, the skater performed a track of steps and three spins of the fourth difficulty level. All the spins and the track of steps have received the maximum fourth level. The average scores for the components ranged from 8.5 to 9.0 points. According to the results of the short program, Liu was less than two points behind the leader.

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In the free skate, the American athlete showed the best result of the segment — 150.20 points. The technical score was 77.74, the components were 72.46, without reductions. Some of the elements were completed in the second half of the program and received a supplement to the base cost. According to the results of the free skate, Liu rose from third place to first and beat her closest rival by 1.89 points.

Alice Liu's victory at the 2026 Olympics was her first Olympic gold in her career and the main result at the adult international level.

Life outside the rink

Outside of competitive activities, Lew pays attention to education.The athlete is studying at the University of California at Los Angeles at the Faculty of Psychology. Family plays an important role in her life. Lew has repeatedly mentioned the support of her father and siblings. She lives in the United States and represents the U.S. Figure Skating National Federation.