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American figure skating star Alysa Liu has widely revealed why she decided to withdraw from the upcoming World Championships following her successes at the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Games.
At a news conference at his celebration event in Oakland on Thursday, Liu said he wanted to go to the World Cup, but he had too many prior commitments.
“I have so many commitments and activities that overlap with the worlds, and I also don’t have much time to train,” Liu said. “So I can’t be in the World Cup. I don’t think I would have given my best performance.”
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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)
Liu also cited the recent wave of “attention” she received after winning gold at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and becoming a social media sensation.
“It’s crazy the visibility I have now. I never would have expected that, especially being a figure skater, that we wouldn’t blow up like that. So, definitely an adjustment,” Liu said. “But it’s really just about staying disconnected.”
Liu’s absence from the world championship roster came just days after she revealed on social media that a spectator recently “chased” her to her car.
“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 entered temporary retirement shortly after her first Olympic appearance in 2022. Her father, Arthur Liu, said it was due to “trauma.”
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USA’s Alysa Liu reacts after competing in the women’s individual figure skating free skate final during the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milan on February 19, 2026. (WANG Zhao/AFP)
“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 the alleged objectives of an espionage operation by the Chinese government. Liu called the experience “a little strange and exciting.”
“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.”
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 to win the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years.
Then, in February, she made history as the first American to win olympic gold in women’s individual 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 increase in popularity.
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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)
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 7.7 million.
But fans won’t be able to see her in Prague as they eagerly await her return to competition.
