How much interest can Alysa Liu revive in figure skating in the US?

[TallyT]

...especially with Kaori (her only real consistent threat IMO) retiring and Russians likely remaining banned for at least another 2 seasons if not the entire quad.

Ummm. Someone is coming up next year from juniors - I may not be her fan, but little Mao has been blitzing with skates and scores most seniors dream of. There are not guarantees for either of her or Alysa, of course, but it is not at all that simple as 'Kaori exiting stage left'.

 

[Arigato]

I think if she keeps winning, then yes. If she falls off quickly, then likely the interest won't be very permanent. It would just put the new U.S. fans off. Proud, globally relevant countries require a significant, consistent world contender to maintain collective interest. Follow counts don't mean much as many athletes farm enormous numbers and interaction if they put effort into content, but it has rarely translated into serious sport viewership. The attention span and general demographic is completely different. There is minimal correlation between people adding a 1001st member to their following list or watching one of a thousand 5 second clips on their page and making their way to spectate multi-hour tournaments.

Make their way to spectate? Wow, there's a red herring if there ever was one. People who follow a particular sport in no way are merely tallied by whether nor not they physically go anywhere and sit down in an arena. How one consumes sports and for that matter, music, has dramatically changed over the years.

Olympics always generate a fleeting interest regardless of what happens.

Yuzuru Hanyu tells me differently. Shaun White tells me differently.

It's definitely possible to convert into long-term nationalistic fans but it isn't guaranteed at all. I do think there's a solid chance Alyssa can do it though especially with Kaori (her only real consistent threat IMO) retiring and Russians likely remaining banned for at least another 2 seasons if not the entire quad.

"Everyone has a gold medal, everyone, but not me. I hate skating. I hate it. I hate this sport. I will never skate again. Never. It's impossible. That's not how it should be".


The words in those quotes are how you destroy interest in a sport, not help it. Give me someone who radiates joy and derives joy from a sport and you have a great ambassador for the sport with the ability to draw people towards it.

 

[moonvine]

This looks good for a resurgence of skating interest in the US, at least for now:

Tour Schedule | Stars on Ice

Purchase Your Stars on Ice Tour Tickets

www.starsonice.com

Stars On Ice shows are selling out, and the last tickets for Boston are going for big prices. They are all Resale tickets, starting prices in the $300+ range.

The priciest
Sec 119 • Row Q
Verified Resale Ticket

$988.58

The Providence show is reasonably priced.

There are now 29 scheduled shows, country wide.

Allen, Texas, has two shows in the US.

They were giving away Groupon tickets in recent years.

All the meet and greets within an 8 hour radius of St Louis have been sold out since Nationals which is when I started looking. Don’t know about the additional Allen show.

 

[Mathematician]

Ummm. Someone is coming up next year from juniors - I may not be her fan, but little Mao has been blitzing with skates and scores most seniors dream of. There are not guarantees for either of her or Alysa, of course, but it is not at all that simple as 'Kaori exiting stage left'.

Yea I forgot about her, she's good.

Make their way to spectate? Wow, there's a red herring if there ever was one. People who follow a particular sport in no way are merely tallied by whether nor not they physically go anywhere and sit down in an arena. How one consumes sports and for that matter, music, has dramatically changed over the years.

By spectate I meant online as well. You can spectate online.

Yuzuru Hanyu tells me differently. Shaun White tells me differently.

Cause they were good otherwise...? I meant Olympics generates at least a fleeting interest, not that it always generates only a fleeting interest. The point is numbers always go up after Olympics and that alone means nothing.

"Everyone has a gold medal, everyone, but not me. I hate skating. I hate it. I hate this sport. I will never skate again. Never. It's impossible. That's not how it should be".


The words in those quotes are how you destroy interest in a sport, not help it. Give me someone who radiates joy and derives joy from a sport and you have a great ambassador for the sport with the ability to draw people towards it.

Yea... so if she keeps relevant to radiate that joy then she will maintain interest in the sport.

 

[Alex Fedorov]

"Everyone has a gold medal, everyone, but not me. I hate skating. I hate it. I hate this sport. I will never skate again. Never. It's impossible. That's not how it should be".


The words in those quotes are how you destroy interest in a sport, not help it. Give me someone who radiates joy and derives joy from a sport and you have a great ambassador for the sport with the ability to draw people towards it.

The girl who uttered these words performed five quads in her program during the 2022 Olympics—and it wasn't enough to win, only second place. Compare this to the program of Alisa Liu at the 2026 Olympics to appreciate the depth of her joy. Of course, Alisa is radiating joy, why not? She looks at the ISU, which doesn't want to allow even juniors from Russia to compete, ignoring IOC recommendations, and she radiates joy. Why not rejoice when there are no competitors and there never will be?

 

[Mathman]

I would just like to jump in with a word about "hype".

Everyone is "hyped" in the US. Not necessarily a bad word. Football fans wait for their team's "hype" video before big games, and it is not an insult. Super fan Bradley Cooper has narrated Eagles hype videos. Everyone accepts it is a hype video and all the fans want to see it. We are usually .... a word doing a lot of heavy lifting... not taken in by sports hype. It's part of our sporting culture.

I have to say that I am not a big fan of this sort of hype. I do understand that marketers market, promoters promote and cheerleaders lead cheers -- that's their job. And plus, it's the American way, along with truth, justice and leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

But my impression of the "hype" surrounding Alysa Liu leading up the Olympics was more, "what hype?" Most of what I saw from Alysa enthusiasts was , "Oh, I like her so much, I hope she can win a medal." Or, "Even if she doesn't, I hope she delivers a performance that she can take pride in."

Maybe I didn't read the right internet sites, but I did not see much at all of, "Here is the list of all the girls whose scrawny butts Alysa is going whup up on in Milano, yuk yuk."

The trouble with pre-bragging about kicking butts is that after the event is over , fans might be left feeling like, Gee, I wish I would have heard fewer words and seen more butt-kicking.

Now, of course, everything is different. Nothing succeeds like success. Will U.S. figure skating as a whole be able to cash in? Yeah, I think it probably will, in the short run anyway.

 

[Arigato]

The girl who uttered these words performed five quads in her program during the 2022 Olympics—and it wasn't enough to win, only second place. Compare this to the program of Alisa Liu at the 2026 Olympics to appreciate the depth of her joy. Of course, Alisa is radiating joy, why not? She looks at the ISU, which doesn't want to allow even juniors from Russia to compete, ignoring IOC recommendations, and she radiates joy. Why not rejoice when there are no competitors and there never will be?

“In our country, they simply don’t teach skating. They teach you to jump, jump, and jump. Then people wonder why the component scores are so low.”​

Alexei Yagudin: “In our country, they simply don’t teach skating. They teach you to jump, jump, and jump. Then people wonder why the component scores are so low.”

Olympic champion Alexei Yagudin on the show “Katok” criticized the system of training figure skaters in Russia.

fs-gossips.com

 

[Arigato]

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

Alysa is the ideal skater to get US interest in figure skating again — but I don't think that will happen because the US just isn't interested in figure skating.

It's not the most accessible sport (financially, and physically, speaking), it isn't televised compared to the major sports, and it requires significant investment, with not much reward.

She's unfiltered and is pure Gen Z energy and attitude, which is what would be needed in someone to gain interest in US figure skating (see: Ilia Malinin). Someone who feels like the cool/rebel kid (aka THAT girl) and not an uppity, coiffed ice princess. It is telling that when she won as the youngest title winner, the splash wasn't there because she was still leaning into what was "expected" of a US champion, but once she started coming into her own and showing her personality and couldn't be touched technically (other than Amber), we got to see what the real Alysa could be.

If you asked ChatGPT to make a figure skater who would appeal to Gen Z/Gen Alpha, yet still has the consistency and confidence and capability of an elite competitive skater, with an atypical background/story, Alysa would be the result. Skaters like her and Amber Glenn (who is out and proud, and unafraid to speak her mind or advocate/protect Kaori/etc. without being prompted or worrying about optics - just feeling and doing as they feel), represent a new generation of US women figure skaters who have swagger and the voice, but also the skating abilities to back it up. They're badass, and that is both appealing and refreshing. That is also incredibly marketable, but like I said, it's just figure skating, so we're not exactly going to get a celeb athlete here (even after their inevitable Drag Race / Dancing With The Stars runs).

The "problem" isn't the skater being marketable in the US, it's with figure skating being marketable in the US.

 

[dorispulaski]

Yagudin:

We need to shift the focus from jumps to gliding, spins, and transition steps. I won’t name names, but there are people who say that Adeliia (Petrosian) and Petya (Gumennik) do almost everything in the center and at much slower speeds than everyone else.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

The girl who uttered these words performed five quads in her program during the 2022 Olympics—and it wasn't enough to win, only second place. Compare this to the program of Alisa Liu at the 2026 Olympics to appreciate the depth of her joy. Of course, Alisa is radiating joy, why not? She looks at the ISU, which doesn't want to allow even juniors from Russia to compete, ignoring IOC recommendations, and she radiates joy. Why not rejoice when there are no competitors and there never will be?

Trusova was rather bratty, but I don't really hold it against her for feeling her emotions (and being the only one without a gold, after the team event - I mean, ultimately, Anna was the only ROC to have a gold from Beijing 2022).

Also she was told if she landed her quads she would win — but she clearly didn't understand that if you fall on your 3A in the SP and flub a 2A+3T, you give back points that your quads have accrued. If she'd done her quads and gone for a 2A in the SP, and landed her 2A+3T, she'd have comfortably won gold (even just the 2A+3T cleanly performed might have done it).

Yeah she had 16 points higher BV than Anna but only 6 points higher on TES in the FS. Apparently nobody told her that Anna would skate cleanly and still had the content to stay ahead of her. I'm not sure if these skaters learn the system itself and how much errors/omissions actually can cost them, but I have a feeling they're just told to jump and skate clean and the results will come.

Kaori had the same costly giving-up-of-points error that denied her gold - didn't matter if she had bigger jumps and a PCS edge on Alysa.

 

[Arigato]

That is also incredibly marketable, but like I said, it's just figure skating, so we're not exactly going to get a celeb athlete here (even after their inevitable Drag Race / Dancing With The Stars runs).

Dancing With The Stars? The answer is at 2:19

 

[el henry]

whole post

I agree that hype can get carried away, although I have not seen one US figure skating "hype" article, video, whatever mention the other skaters. That's more of a football approach, IMO (Fly Eagles Fly and by the way, the Cowboys suck) The US can barely get folks to know who their own skaters are, let alone talk trash about the others.

That's why I thought the Taylor Swift promo was so good. It introduced all of the US ladies, obviously they all weren't going to win gold but they're all going for the gold because that's the American way. Alysa did say she thought the promo was cool.

I would hope no skater cares about hype videos. They're meant for the fans

 

[Sjs5572]

I was curious about how many USA women gold medalists skated at post-olympics Worlds.
Yes: Albright, Heiss, Fleming, Hamill, Yamaguchi.
No: Lipinski, Hughes.

I have to give Alysa props for skating in Prague. It must be hard to get psyched for Worlds after the emotional highs of the last month.

 

[Mathematician]

Yagudin:

The thing is I haven't seen anyone say any of that. I haven't seen anyone claim Adeliia's spins or sequences are at "slower speed" than anyone. Their claims are about choreography and edges. In what world is TeamTut not working hard enough on their spins? Didn't Petr get all level 4s? Who says speed is lacking? Nobody says that...

 

[dorispulaski]

I have no idea what sources Yagudin has...not even in which languages he has them. I can't say I was particularly impressed with Adeliia, but she is still recovering from injury.

 

[Arigato]

The thing is I haven't seen anyone say any of that. I haven't seen anyone claim Adeliia's spins or sequences are at "slower speed" than anyone. Their claims are about choreography and edges. In what world is TeamTut not working hard enough on their spins? Didn't Petr get all level 4s? Who says speed is lacking? Nobody says that...

Whether or not you've personally seen anyone claim X, Y, or Z about Betty Boop or Joe Blow doesn't mean someone hasn't made a claim. You're not omnipresent. As for Petr, actually, no. He didn't get all level 4s on his spins at the OLYG.

 

[DancingCactus]

Words of wisdom coming out of Yagudin's mouth?

 

[TallyT]

Words of wisdom coming out of Yagudin's mouth?

Did you see that recent 'game' someone got him to play and posted, where other male skaters at the time and since were named and he only spoke if they were in his opinion stronger than him? (hint: not many were even 50-50) His leaning towards artistry and beauty was pretty clear and I really don't know who in the current women he would compliment.

 

[Anna K.]

Regarding who said what and when, maybe @Fetinia can help? I understood from her post that she watches Russian podcasts and YouTube channels.