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

[yfan1]

Right. And I say, that whether American media is responsible for her popularity or not, I see no effort from them in contributing towards popularizing the sport based off her win and popularity.

It matters not at all how much money Alysa makes off the recent frenzy, or whether this frenzy will last, if nothing's being done to actually popularize the sport of skating off it. American media has a readymade blueprint with Hanyu there, and yet it chooses not to follow it, and the same I expect will go for the fans Liu will bring from this frenzy.

 

[el henry]

Right. And I say, that whether American media is responsible for her popularity or not, I see no effort from them in contributing towards popularizing the sport based off her win and popularity.

It matters not at all how much money Alysa makes off the recent frenzy, or whether this frenzy will last, if nothing's being done to actually popularize the sport of skating off it. American media has a readymade blueprint with Hanyu there, and yet it chooses not to follow it, and the same I expect will go for the fans Liu will bring from this frenzy.

I agree this is the crux of the matter: how can US figure skating capture this lightning in a bottle? I applaud the Hanyu example in Japan, but I'm not sure it would work in the US.

To the extent USFS can ride the media interest now, that would be great. I am actually happy that the next skating many people in the US see will be Stars on Ice. That is more likely to keep people's interest up at this point than a comp Alysa may or may not win. And maybe Alysa fans will go and say wow pairs skating is insane (a usual reaction IME from folks who have not seen pairs live) or Jason Brown is joyous or Andrew T. is passionate or Ilia is fast and strong and maybe want to see them in comps.

I can hope, but I don't know.

ETA: I agree Alysa getting the bag is not relevant to my inquiry. I hope she does and good for her, but not my question.

 

[Mathman]

Malinin got way more attention from people around me than Liu. NBC was hyping him before the Olympics ...

I think that the All-Powerful U.S. Media Monster is not always as all-powerful as it pretends. Yes, Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinsky kept telling us that the old sport of figure skating was dead and buried and the new sport of quad-godding had been born hallelujah -- but was anyone listening?

The one thing that the APUSMM can do, though, is create the next "IT" girl. They have done so. Will figure skating become the new "it" sport? Naw... but every little bit helps.

 

[noskates]

Not sure why someone in this thread thinks that the US media is doing nothing to promote figure skating off of Alysa's Gold Medal/ She's been on most of the morning shows, several late night shows, 60 minutes, Rolling Stone interview, many other interviews and all over You Tube. Seems like there's another agenda going on in here. Not to mention the renewed interest in SOI - which has been struggling for years, even after Nathan's OGM. Maybe this will all blow over by next season but maybe it won't. In any case, why does the glass have to be half empty? I just get the feeling that some of you WANT there to be a negative downstream effect and I honestly can't understand why! I'm happy she won. I'm happy there is a renewed interest even if some of you don't apparently want that to be true.

 

[yfan1]

Not sure why someone in this thread thinks that the US media is promoting figure skating off of Alysa's Gold Medal/ She's been on most of the morning shows, several late night shows, 60 minutes, Rolling Stone interview, many other interviews and all over You Tube, which apparently add up to promoting figure skating and making figure skating a popular sport, and not just regular old celebrity culture stuff, and shows zero metric about how this has increased interest in the sport.

Seems like there's another agenda going on in here.

Not to mention the renewed interest in SOI - which has been struggling for years, even after Nathan's OGM. Maybe this will all blow over by next season but maybe it won't - which apparently is the same as promoting interest in the sport, because SOI is the entire sport.

In any case, why does the glass have to be half full? I just get the feeling that some of you WANT there to be a positive downstream effect and I honestly can't understand why!

I'm not sure I care either way that she won. I can't be happy there is a renewed interest seeing how there exists no evidence that this happened, even if some of you apparently want that to be true.

 

[yfan1]

To me, the most thought-provoking quote on this whole thread came in the interview with the New York Times dance critic, posted by @el henry #159 above. It was on the topic of whether Alysa wanted to inspire a new generation to take up the sport of figure skating.

Interviewer: Do you think about how you will influence skating?

Allysa: You know, that's actually been a really deep struggle in whether I want skating to be big or not.

Interviewer: Why?

Alysa: I'm glad for it. I wouldn't change my childhood at all.But I feel like no child should go through that... Sometimes it's not toxic but it usually is, especially at the top. Most skaters have had bad experiences.

This is something already quite a lot of us have been saying and have said. There's no real reason to wonder and hope that skating will be becoming big. The issues with it are too malignant, and I don't particularly want people to be influenced by Alysa's father, who I feel will be just as much of an influence for many parents as she and her words would be for younger children wishing to skate.

In that sense, I find the questions being asked and answered in this thread to be simplistic exercises.

 

[Violet Sky]

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March 12, 2026 - Oakland Celebrates HomeTown Olympian - Alysa Liu

 

[Mathman]

This is something already quite a lot of us have been saying and have said.

True... but... somehow, to me, it has more weight coming from Alysa than from quite a lot of us.

@TallyT brought up the case of Yuna Kim as an example of someone who definitely did have great influence in the visibility of figure skating in her country. She paid a price. As a fifteen-year-old, as far as I could tell looking in from the outside, she was not happy moving to Canada for coaching. She was homesick, she did not speak English (or French) with fluency, she was thrust into an unfamiliar culture leaving her friends and family behind. After 2010 she gave every indication that she had had enough, but reluctantly went along with the wishes of the Korean Skating Federation for the sake of patriotism. (Maybe this is a pessimistic exaggeration -- I don't really know.)

Well, she can console herself with being a national heroine and beloved celebrity with 30 billion won in the bank. But it is sobering nonetheless.

 

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Oakland Celebrates Alysa Liu today ! The Town turned up for her!

 

[noskates]

Well for not caring, there's a great deal of time in this thread. Just saying............

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

In answer to the question, I do not believe that Alysa will create any major increase in interest in figure skating in the US. It doesn't seem to be about the skating with her, it's more a personality thing. I do expect her to retire. I'm moving forward...Worlds in two weeks!

I expected Alysa to retire, too. She has done it all at this point. But she did say she would see us next season. I suppose there's a chance that different off-ice opportunities could end up changing her mind.

I read some of Alysa's quotes from the NYTimes interview, and I am impressed with her speaking the truth that something definitely needs to change about the sport's competitive structure. It's too antiquated. Skaters have generally been taught to not speak out, but just to go along to get along. So, it is definitely refreshing to hear this truth being voiced by Alysa. No matter that the sport's issues are so complicated to the point where ways to resolve the imbalances are not easy or straightforward. It takes vision, courage, leadership, expertise and responsibility to make genuine efforts to explore different possibilities, and to include all voices in addressing the challenges. Currently, we do not seem to have anyone in power positions who possess any of these qualities, even despite some persons in the ISU recognizing the need for significant change. They just seem to always go about it piecemeal, awkwardly, and ineptly. As I have been saying, I fear there will not be beneficial change for figure skating and figure skaters as long as the sport is tied at the hip to speedskating, and on the poor unequal revenue sharing end of things (involving revenue largely generated by figure skating).

As to the question of whether Alysa Liu's success can help increase the sport's popularity in the U.S., in the short term, there may be a spike in interest reflected in ticket sells, and in sign-ups for Learn to Skate programs. Yet, as others have said, the current interest is largely about Alysa herself and her unique story and personality. Moreso, Alysa's medals continue adding to U.S. ladies' commanding lead in all-time Worlds and Olympic medal wins. U.S. women have been so far ahead that even a drought of 10 years (2006 to 2016) did not decrease their lead to any significant degree!

U.S. women hold a total of 75 all-time World championship medals to date, starting with Beatrix Loughran's bronze in 1924 all the way through the burgeoning 1950s with Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss, then the bountiful decades afterward with 2006 the last medals for U.S. women for a decade: Kimmie Meissner (gold); Sasha Cohen (bronze). In 2016, Ashley Wagner's silver breaks the drought. Then, Alysa Liu's bronze in 2022, Isabeau Levito's silver in 2024, and Alysa's gold in 2025.
The following countries are also fairly prominent in total medal wins for women:
Austria 30 (early years)
Germany 26 (includes East + West)
Japan 25 (since 1989, Midori Ito gold)
Combined total for Soviet Union & Russia = 25
Great Britain 22 (early years through 1950s)
Canada 16
Norway 13 (10 by Sonja Henie)
Hungary 11
South Korea 8 (starting w/ Yuna Kim)
Sweden 7
et al.
Japanese and Russian women may have the best chances of catching up to the U.S. women, but it will take a while).

Wiki used to do a detailed breakdown of the exact numbers for each discipline by top countries and by color of medal, but they don't include those tabulations anymore, and it's not easy to count manually due to flag changes, etc. Wiki does have a table charting total Worlds medals by individual countries in all figure skating disciplines. Unsurprisingly:
U.S. gold-63 silver-65 bronze-84 = 212
Austria 116
Canada 113
Soviet Union 110
Russia 86
Great Britain 83
France 54
Japan 53
Combined totals Germany (+ East & West) 58 + 40 + 25 = 123

Total Olympics fs medals for U.S. women = 24
Austria 7
Great Britain 6
Germany 6 (combined)
Canada 6
Japan 5
Soviet Union + Russia = 8

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Adam Rippon recently hosted a conversation with his friends and former training mates, Ashley Wagner and Nathan Chen, entitled Legacies Unscripted: Figure Skating, sponsored by the USO[lympic]P[aralympic] Museum. I'm posting the link here due to their fascinating discussion of Alysa Liu and her unique approach to coming back to the sport on her own terms for the love and joy (which involved working hard), but not necessarily and exclusively for gold at the end of the rainbow. Apparently, Alysa's lighthearted, seemingly unbothered, yet fully engaged approach felt healing for a number of athletes, including some from other sports. The discussion re Alysa begins around 20:23. She came back for 'something, but not nothing.' "It hurts to be something. It's worse to be nothing without you."

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[yfan1]

Well for not caring, there's a great deal of time in this thread.

Well for caring about the popularity of skating as a sport - which I do - it doesn't seem like all that much time in this thread at all. I thought that was the point?

Or maybe we care more about a single skater's popularity and celebrity, not really the sport.

Just saying............

 

[yfan1]

True... but... somehow, to me, it has more weight coming from Alysa than from quite a lot of us.

@TallyT brought up the case of Yuna Kim as an example of someone who definitely did have great influence in the visibility of figure skating in her country. She paid a price. As a fifteen-year-old, as far as I could tell looking in from the outside, she was not happy moving to Canada for coaching. She was homesick, she did not speak English (or French) with fluency, she was thrust into an unfamiliar culture leaving her friends and family behind. After 2010 she gave every indication that she had had enough, but reluctantly went along with the wishes of the Korean Skating Federation for the sake of patriotism. (Maybe this is a pessimistic exaggeration -- I don't really know.)

Well, she can console herself with being a national heroine and beloved celebrity with 30 billion won in the bank. But it is sobering nonetheless.

It is, and not to rehash everything because I'm sure this was all spoken about ad nauseam on here a long time back.

Y

Post in thread 'Should quads per program be limited to balance artistry?'

Dec 3, 2025

I do not think she does things for ISU but for the Korean Fed - but here I do not follow that closely so I might be wrong.

So if she appears at 4CC 2020's medal ceremonies, what does it mean?

But I remember she was quite bitter, wasn't she?

What gives you the impression that she was quite bitter?

Call it Asian politeness, but she was very gracious after Sochi.

She worked tirelessly for the PyeongChang Olympics.

She appeared in 2020 4CCs award ceremonies.

She gives advise to internationally competitive skaters.

Bitterness and burnout can exist, but there's no one...

• yfan1

• 
• 

Here's where I'd brought up what all Yuna had to put up with. We need to admit that her popularity to quite an extent was choreographed (quite literally) by David Wilson and Brian Orser, and even after she left Orser, she still retained Wilson as her choreographer. Not to say much about their relationship because it seems like a great mentor/protegee relationship, but I do remember Wilson being quite pissed at some point that Yuna was not "giving back" to the skating community. I have to say that those words really missed the point and missed it by light years. As a female athlete, yes, she's likely had to put up with quite a lot of shit that we aren't actually privvy to, and as a male superior, it seemed at the time rather entitled to me that Wilson felt she owed his "community" something in return beyond what he'd already got from her success.

I've never managed to separate Wilson's words from why Yuna simply never did all that much show skating, even as she continues to support her federation's skaters by giving them a better training environment.

In general, people simply seem to bring up Tutberidze's abusive coaching and the level of skating her students displayed - but we rarely ever discuss to what extent we are culpable in it all that we keep watching this sport... It's this reason why I simply needed to take a break and still can't fully get back into the sport, and probably my fandom will never get back to what it once was due to this.

 

[noskates]

 

[TontoK]

I think this has been said in a variety of ways, so maybe I'm not contributing anything new - more of getting my own thoughts in order.

Theoretically, one of the ways that I think Alysa may grow the sport is simply in the perceptions of what it means to be a figure skater. She seems to be charting her own path, taking charge of the direction of her skating and her career in a way that I don't recall from other lady champions.

Looking back at former US champions, they don't seem like they should be similar, but they've mostly fallen into the same category. Impeccably groomed, debutante-ready, practiced answers to predictable interview questions. In short, the standard-issue ice princess.

That's not the majority of girls today. The many young girls who might otherwise dismiss skating as a pursuit or even something to admire... well, now they have a chance to reconsider.

The shackles are off. Can you imagine Peggy Fleming dying her hair in stripes before the Olympics? Now you can be yourself.

 

[Mathman]

... II see no effort from [American Media] in contributing towards popularizing the sport based off [Alysa']s win and popularity.

But then again, why would American Media have any interest in promoting the popularity of figure skating? What's in it for them?

 

[yfan1]

But then again, why would American Media have any interest in promoting the popularity of figure skating? What's in it for them?

Well, then since media tends to be a reflection of what it judges the interests of the populace it is catering to are, I have to question whether there is a reason for the question that was being asked in the title of this thread. What is in it for anyone if skating doesn't interest anyone to begin?

If the media judges that there's no point in popularizing skating - and I'd guess it'd have done its research about the interests of its viewership - then will Alysa Liu end up somehow managing to make skating popular among the general public? No. And certainly not without any help, which apparently won't be given to her because nothing's in it for the media to be providing it.

 

[Mathman]

If the media judges that there's no point in popularizing skating - .... then will Alysa Liu end up somehow managing to make skating popular among the general public?

Well, that's the question of this thread. I don't think that the question is merlely rhetorical. Some people say "no," some say "maybe, to some extent."

 

[yfan1]

I don't think that the question is merlely rhetorical.

Questions can be reduced to rhetorical statements if we have assumptions like how the media is simply disinterested and finds that there's nothing in it for them, though.

Media is interested in her as a celebrity. Good for them. But if it's not interested in her sport, then it's unlikely it will be a well attended sport. Maybe she'll still want to promote it herself, somehow, but she'll still need some aids, unless she'll choose to simply do it all through her own social media with no need for any sort of marketing or visibility...