Alysa Liu won gold for the United States in figure skating on Thursday – a triumphant achievement after being previously victimized by a Chinese spy operation.
Liu took home the gold in the women’s free skate final on Thursday, officially ending a “20-year medal drought for American women in the event and a 24-year drought for gold,” per Fox News.
The last American woman to win a singles figure skating medal at the Olympics was Sasha Cohen at the 2006 Turin Games. And the last American woman to win a gold medal in singles figure skating was Sarah Hughes, who pulled off that accomplishment in 2002 when the Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City.
She landed all her jumps and smiled throughout, erupting in a demonstrative celebration after she finished. She yelled, “That’s what I’m f—ing talking about!’ and “Holy s—!” while celebrating with her team.
Liu finished with a 226.79 total score, a 150.20 free skate score and a 76.59 short program score. It was her season-best free skate score.
Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai of Japan came within inches of besting Liu’s score shortly after the performance, but they came up short.
Liu’s triumph was not only a comeback for the United States but a comeback for herself after falling victim to a Chinese spy operation against her father, Arthur Liu, a refugee who partook in the Tiananmen Square protests, leading up to the Beijing Winter Olympics of 2022, per Men’s Journal:
Arthur fled China at 25, eventually settling in the Bay Area, earning a law degree from the University of California, and starting his own practice. He had grown up in a small mountain village in Sichuan Province, one of six children. His political activism forced him to leave his home country. Years later, as his daughter rose to global prominence in a sport that would take her back to Beijing, that past resurfaced.
According to reporting at the time, one of five men charged with spying on Chinese dissidents in the U.S. allegedly contacted Arthur in 2021 while posing as a U.S. Olympic official. He asked for passport information. Authorities later said the suspect traveled to California’s Bay Area to surveil the family and attempt to gather private details.
Arthur told the Associated Press then that he believed the effort was meant to intimidate them — to discourage him from speaking out about human rights issues. He worried about his daughter’s safety. He also credited the U.S. government with protecting her.
Liu described the ordeal as a “little bit freaky and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so … unbelievable. You know what I mean, like, that’s crazy,” Liu told Fox News last year.
“Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age. I mean, like In a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real? Like, I must be some movie character,” she added. “But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from, like, everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
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