Alysa Liu's new reality: fame, fashion and the fast lane

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Alysa Liu's new reality: fame, fashion and the fast lane

Phillip DiGuglielmo began to see the handwriting on the wall not long after murals of Alysa Liu went up in Oakland and suburban Los Angeles.

For two weeks after Liu won the Olympic women’s singles title Feb. 19 in Milan, she and DiGuglielmo, her coach, still planned on going to Prague later this month so she could defend her world title.

“I knew her training wouldn’t be optimal, but we’re used to that,” DiGuglielmo said by telephone. “But this was going to be far from optimal.”

He understood that it was time for Liu to optimize the things coming her way since she became a sensation at the Olympics.

“She is just exploding,” he said. “Even her agents are overwhelmed. You have to balance what is her opportunity to build her brand versus going to worlds.”

By last Friday, she and her team agreed it was best for Liu to withdraw from the World Championships.

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A thank you to all those who helped me do what I love: write about figure skating (and the Olympics)

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A thank you to all those who helped me do what I love: write about figure skating (and the Olympics)

And, now that I have finished posting the last few stories to my Blog, I can close the books on the 2026 Winter Olympics. (You can find all the stories here.)
I want to thank NBC Olympics & Paralympics for letting me be part of its coverage team for the second straight Olympics - and to thank in particular the tireless crew of editors and writers at the NBC Olympics web site. It was a privilege to work with you.

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With four Olympic medals, Kaori Sakamoto didn't need gold to cement her legacy

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With four Olympic medals, Kaori Sakamoto didn't need gold to cement her legacy

Kaori Sakamoto knew well before the scores were announced. She skated off the ice Thursday night at the Milano Ice Skating Arena with a glum expression on her face. She could sense that the one jump she couldn’t pull off in her free skate was going to keep her from the gold medal.

Alysa Liu, the soon-to-be champion, got up from the leader’s chair as soon as Sakamoto left the ice surface. Liu hugged Sakamoto tight and long. A tear worked its way slowly down Sakamoto’s right cheek. More tears would flow later from the most decorated women’s figure skater in Japanese history.

“I really wanted to skate perfectly here,” Sakamoto said via an interpreter. “Knowing that I couldn’t, and it was the difference for the gold, was painful. I couldn’t stop the tears.”

This was her third and last Winter Olympics. The second, four years ago, had also ended in tears so strong her body shook as she wept. Those tears looked like a mixture of happiness over winning what she calls “a miracle” bronze medal and relief over simply surviving the chaos surrounding the women’s singles event in Beijing.

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Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara pulled off tear-filled comeback to win Olympic gold

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Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara pulled off tear-filled comeback to win Olympic gold

Ryuichi Kihara looked crestfallen as he left the ice after the Olympic pairs short program Sunday, knowing his big mistake on a lift would be costly for him and his partner, Riku Miura.

The team’s coach, Bruno Marcotte, quickly tried to temper Kihara’s disappointment, which would increase when he heard the scores that put the reigning world champions from Japan in 5th place heading into Monday’s free skate.

“It’s not over,” Marcotte insisted to Kihara, then repeated. “It’s not over.”

How right he was.

And how different Kihara’s emotions were when it was over, even if someone watching without knowing the context might have wondered why he was bawling, his face contorted by the tears of joy just a few hours after he had finished crying tears of distress.

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Alysa Liu performed for the people, especially her family, in Olympic short program

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Alysa Liu performed for the people, especially her family, in Olympic short program

Over the two seasons since Alysa Liu returned to figure skating, she has found happiness in performing for the audience rather than for the judges who decide what place she gets in competitions.

Because that audience for the 2026 Olympic short program included her four younger siblings, who had never been able to see their sister skate in either of the two phases of her career, Liu was even more overjoyed at the opportunity to perform for them.

She saw them, sitting with her father and her best friend, during the six-minute warmup that preceded her taking the ice as the first skater in the final group Tuesday night on Milan. She looked at them while heading into her double Axel jump and during her footwork sequence.

“I performed to the people and, like, they're right there, so I performed to them specifically,” Liu said. “It was a really cool moment.”

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