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Less than a month after winning Olympic gold, American figure skating sensation Alysa Liu appears to have surprisingly withdrawn from the World Skating Championships in Prague, Czech Republic.
Liu is no longer listed among the event participants on the International Skating Union (ISU) website. Her original place is now occupied by the second alternative, Sarah Everhardt.
Pak Gazette Digital has reached out to Liu’s representatives for comment.
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Alysa Liu of the United States arrives to compete during the women’s figure skating free program at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
There is currently no known reason for Liu’s sudden absence from the list.
The change comes just days after Liu revealed on social media that she was recently “chased” to her car by an onlooker.
“So I land at the airport and there’s a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras and things for me to sign,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “All in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car, bro. Please don’t do that to me.”
Liu previously entered temporary retirement shortly after her first Olympic appearance in 2022. Her father, Arthur Liu, said it was due to “trauma.”
“He became very unhappy,” Arthur Liu told USA Today about why he retired. “She avoided the ice rink at all costs. She’s traumatized. She was just traumatized. She was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and wouldn’t go near the ice rink.”
Before her appearance at the 2022 Beijing Games, she and her father were alleged targets of a spy operation by the Chinese government. Liu called the experience “a little strange and exciting.”
Gold medalist Alysa Liu of Team USA poses for a photo during the medal ceremony in women’s single skating on day thirteen of the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Milano Ice Skating Arena on February 19, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
“You know what I mean? It’s so… unbelievable. You know what I mean, that’s crazy,” he previously told Pak Gazette Digital in a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.
“Imagine finding out that at such a young age. I mean, in a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like on some prank show?’ Is this world real? I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, because of everything my father did in his activist days.”
Arthur Liu told The Associated Press in 2022: “They’re probably just trying to intimidate us, to… somehow threaten us into not saying anything, to cause trouble for them and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China… I was worried about her safety. The US government did a good job protecting her.”
Liu returned to the sport just two years later, in 2024. By March 2025, she was making history with Team USA, becoming the first American at the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years. Then in February, she made history as the first American to win Olympic gold in a women’s singles figure skating competition since 2002, and the first American woman to medal in the event since 2006.
The historic victory was followed by a huge surge in popularity.
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Alysa Liu of Team USA performs in the women’s single skating routine during a figure skating exhibition gala on day fifteen of the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Milano Ice Skating Arena on February 21, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Before the Olympics, he had fewer than 300,000 followers on Instagram. Just a week after the Olympics ended, it surpassed 5 million. Now, at the time of this publication, it has over 7.4 million.
However, it seems that many of her new fans will now not be able to see her compete in Prague.
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