by WorldTribune Staff, February 21, 2026 Real World News
Alysa Liu won the gold in the women’s free skate final on Feb. 19, 2026, officially ending a what a Fox News report termed a “20-year medal drought for American women in the event and a 24-year drought for gold.”
It was also a major comeback story for Liu, who had walked away from figure skating in 2022. She delivered all her jumps in a flawless performance with much joy and no signs of stress, all the while insisting that it was her story, not medals, that mattered.
Her stunning performance created a sensation on social media, but it was her life course and that of her father that multiplied the online impact of a news story that was effectively downplayed by corporate media.
Arthur Liu, now an attorney, took part in the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising and was forced into exile to the United States. However the Chinese Communist Party kept tabs on him.
One of five men subsequently charged with spying on Chinese dissidents in the U.S. reportedly made contact with Arthur in 2021 under the guise of a U.S. Olympic official. Later he came to California to track the family, according law enforcement authorities.
Arthur told AP at the time he believed the effort was meant to intimidate him from speaking out about human rights in China and to influence his daughter’s skating career options. He credited the U.S. government for protecting her.
Alysa Liu, under the training and investment of her father became the youngest woman, at 12-years-old to ever land a triple axel and the youngest U.S. figure skating champion.
However, she decided to quit figure skating after the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
“She became really unhappy,” Arthur Liu said according to a USA Today report. “She avoided the ice rink at all costs. She was just traumatized. She was suffering from PTSD and she wouldn’t go near the ice rink.”
Arthur also told CBS in 2022 that he was “a little” hurt by his daughter’s decision to take more control over her career, but also said “she’s a very free spirit, like me.”
In 2022, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed criminal charges involving “three separate efforts by agents of the Chinese government to intimidate critics of the regime living in the U.S.” including Arthur Liu, according to NBC News, .
Finding herself a character caught up in an international drama, Liu described the ordeal as a “little bit freaky and exciting.”
“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 told Fox News. “But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from, like, everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
Hudson Institute China scholar Miles Yu, a former Geostrategy-Direct.com contributing editor, posted on social media about the challenges of raising talented children who have caught the attention of the Chinese Communist Party:
As a parent of a teenager born free in America, let me offer my thoughts on the tales of two Olympians, Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu, both born free in America as well.
Their careers tell two very different stories about parenting, freedom, and what success really means. These are not just sports narratives — they are a referendum on tiger parenting and a defense of individual choice.
At its extreme, tiger parenting turns a child into a project. Medals matter more than autonomy. Prestige outweighs selfhood. In Gu’s case, her mother’s influence appears decisive at every stage — training, branding, even the choice of nation.
Ambition is not the problem. Control is. When a parent’s strategic vision overrides a child’s independence, achievement comes at a cost. The result may be dazzling, but it feels engineered — success executed according to parental plan.
Liu’s story offers a rebuttal. Her father pushed her hard; her early rise was no accident. But when she chose to walk away at the height of fame — leaving medals, money, and momentum behind — he did something crucial: He let her. He allowed her to choose uncertainty over guaranteed glory. In that moment, parenting shifted from pressure to respect. He accepted that her life belonged to her, not to the dream he helped build.
That choice defines the contrast. Liu risked everything to claim ownership of her path. When she returned, it was on her terms. Freedom means the ability to say no — even when the world rewards you for saying yes. It means valuing self-knowledge over spectacle, independence over applause.
Gu’s trajectory suggests a different tradeoff: Extraordinary wealth, status, and symbolic power — but no visible break from the system guiding her. Her success is immense. Yet it appears to follow a script written early and followed faithfully.
In the end, the divide is philosophical. One path prizes gold and fame. The other prizes autonomy — the right to pause, to question, to redirect. One measures success in trophies. The other measures it in ownership of one’s own life, which ultimately also brings trophies too.
A truly successful upbringing does not just produce champions. It produces free human beings. The real test of love is not how high a child climbs, but whether they are free to choose the mountain.
So, my hats off to Arthur and Alysa Liu, what a great triumph of American patriotism, and individual freedom.
One moment in time: The life stories of Alysa Liu and her father added by Editor One on
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