‘My dad doesn’t deserve to be happy’: Alysa Liu

During an interview with Rolling Stone on March 7, the 20-year-old Olympic champion opened up about the complex emotions surrounding her comeback. When asked about her father’s response to her return, Liu did not hold back.

“I don’t know. I have no idea. I mean, he was happy,” Alysa said. “But that didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care that he was happy. I was almost mad that he was happy, because I was like, ‘How dare you?'”

Alysa explained that this frustration is deeply rooted in their tense history. Her father, Arthur, had opposed her decision to retire at age 16 following the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Because of his intense reaction back then, his joy over her return felt unfair to her.

“Well, I was just like, ‘My dad doesn’t deserve to be happy over this decision, kind of. Because you were mad when I quit.’ So I was kind of like, he shouldn’t have an opinion on it at all, if that makes sense. I didn’t want him to be mad that I was coming back; I just didn’t want him to care. Like, at all. because it shouldn’t affect him as much as it did the last time around,” she added.

Complicated family dynamic

Alysa’s raw honesty sheds light on the complicated relationship with her father, who was the architect of her figure skating career from childhood.

Arthur is a Chinese-born lawyer who fled to the U.S. following protests in 1989. After settling in the Bay Area of San Francisco, he decided to build a large family as a single father through surrogacy and anonymous egg donors. Alysa is the eldest of his five children, followed by Selina and triplets Julia, Joshua and Justin.

Raising five children as a single working father with the help of his mother made for a unique upbringing. However, Arthur’s greatest passion was figure skating. He steered Alysa into the sport and invested heavily, reportedly between $500,000 and $1 million, in coaching, training, and trips to competitions, according to a CBS‘s “60 Minutes” report. This big financial and personal investment helped mold Alysa into a prodigy and the youngest national champion in the history of American figure skating at age 13.

An old photo of Alysa Liu and her father Arthur Liu. Photo by Instagram/@alysaxliu

However, the intensity and pressure also quickly exhausted Alysa. She has since admitted that her father interfered too much in her training, including sneaking into the rink in disguise to monitor her coaches and take notes.

After the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Alysa surprised everyone by announcing her retirement at the age of 16. She stated that this decision was kept secret from most people.

“I didn’t tell anybody, because I knew I was going to get some pushback, and then I posted about it and that’s how everybody found out,” Alysa recalled.

During her two-year hiatus, she focused on experiencing a normal teenage life. When she finally decided to return to the ice in 2024, she did so with one non-negotiable condition: she had to be in absolute control of her career.

When asked by Rolling Stone if she had to “fire” her dad as her manager upon her return, Alysa clarified that she didn’t have to fire him simply because “he was never there”.

Setting these boundaries proved to be the turning point. Alysa trained and competed without the weight of family pressure; she created an impressive return in the Winter Olympics. At the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games, she captured two gold medals, including the women’s singles title, an achievement the U.S. had not seen since 2002.

Despite sharing a hug with her father after her historic Olympic victory, Alysa still maintained a professional distance. She prefers having Arthur sitting in the stands as a spectator, believing that this boundary is the only way she can sustain a long-term career as an athlete.