“You don’t deserve to be happy”: Alysa Liu opens up on father Arthur Liu anger as Team USA figure skater questions his reaction to her comeback

Alysa Liu is back on the ice, but this time she is doing things her own way. The 20 year old Team USA figure skater came out of retirement in 2024 and started training again with one clear goal in mind, the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The choice was hers. No one pushed her into it. But when she made that decision, one reaction still stayed in her mind. It was her father, Arthur Liu. When Alysa Liu retired in 2022, he was upset about it. So when she decided to return to the sport, she did not want that same reaction again.In a video interview with Rolling Stone published on March 7, Alysa Liu spoke honestly about that moment. She said she was actually upset when her father seemed happy about her comeback.

For her, the decision was deeply personal, and she did not want anyone else’s emotions shaping it.

Alysa Liu says father Arthur Liu should not have had an opinion on her comeback decision

During the interview with Rolling Stone, Alysa Liu explained that her return to figure skating was something she wanted to control completely. After years of intense training as a teenager, she wanted to make sure this time felt different.She said she did not want her father, Arthur Liu, to react strongly when she came back to skating.

In fact, she hoped he would not react at all.“I didn’t want him to be mad that I was coming back,” Alysa Liu said in the interview. “I just didn’t want him to care, like, at all. It shouldn’t affect him as much as it did the last time.”But when she noticed that he seemed happy about her return, it made her feel uncomfortable.“I mean, he was happy but that didn’t matter to me,” she said. “I didn’t care that he was happy. I was almost mad that he was happy because I was like, ‘How dare you? You don’t deserve to be happy over this decision because you were mad when I quit.’”For Alysa Liu, the reason behind those feelings goes back to the pressure she experienced while growing up in the sport. She became famous very young and trained under a very strict system. Over time, that pressure slowly took away the joy she once felt while skating.She said that period of her life was extremely hard. Practices were serious every single day, and mistakes felt heavy.“It was so bad. I just didn’t want to remember,” Alysa Liu said.

“Every day was the same for me. Practice was so serious. I would cry after falling on every jump. The team I had around me was so strict. So I was in fight or flight mode all the time.”According to Alysa Liu, she rarely even had rest days during those years. The only time she finally slowed down was during the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020.Looking back, she now realizes how little control she had back then.“I’d never made a single decision,” she said. “I was just agreeing to what everyone else around me was saying.”That is why her comeback in 2024 feels so different. This time she is deciding everything herself.Alysa Liu also clarified that she did not remove her father from anything when she returned to skating.“I didn’t have to fire him,” she said. “He was never there. He was not on the team, so it was fine.”Now, as she prepares for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Alysa Liu says the biggest change is simple. The sport finally feels like her own choice again.