Alysa Liu is at the top of the world at the moment after winning two gold medals at the most recent Winter Olympic Games in Milan, Italy.
During the day, she’s doing morning shows. In the afternoon, she’s interviewing with magazine publications. After the sun goes down, she’s on late-night talk shows, having fun and meeting celebrities she idolized growing up.
Due to all the extra attention she’s received since returning home, Liu withdrew from the upcoming World Championships in Prague, deciding not to defend the title she won in 2025.
While fans and non-fans alike understood why she would sit out Worlds, new comments she made about the current state of figure skating have gotten her in hot water with the community at large.
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“Things gotta change, 100 percent,” Liu said in an interview with the New York Times on the sport of figure skating. “I think the whole system’s got to scrap it and start over. The competition system and the setup just isn’t fit for consumption, honestly, because the competitions are too long, no one can sit through and watch all that.
“And people don’t understand the scoring. Sometimes I don’t either. And music is a big thing. Copyright. Music rights were a mess this time. Lucky for me, the artists really like it when I skate to their music, but one day I might be unlucky.”
Although most of her message was praised by figure skating fans, most particularly the judging and copyright around music, one section of her plea left fans pushing back at the gold medalist.
“Girl, I like you, but competitions running for 5 hours is absolutely not a thing that needs to be scrapped when the reason for that is half of the skaters in the field come from smaller federations that have no chance of winning a medal,” posted a fan in response to Liu’s statement. “Not everything has to be digestible for TV.”
“I don’t know, a rich American woman talking about how competitions are ‘too long’ kinda feels strange to me,” said another figure skating viewer. “Considering shortening the length of competitions would push many small fed skaters out of the sport.”
“If you are new to the sport, you only watch the last/two groups,” someone else posted on X. “Once you start falling in love with it and the skaters, you start watching more and more. I don’t think comps are too long at all.”
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