From Burnout to World Champion: Alysa Liu’s Unlikely Comeback
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Show Notes
Whoever said quitters never win never met Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu.
Liu quit figure skating after the 2022 Winter Olympics. At age 16, she was burned out and wanted to be a normal teenager.
"I was done a year before I quit. I knew I wanted to be done way before I actually announced my retirement," Liu said.
For two years, Liu embraced life as a teenager, making up for lost time she'd spent on the ice. She got a driver's license, drove her four siblings to school, stayed up late and hung out with friends. She traveled for fun instead of competitions and even hiked in the Himalayas.
She enrolled at UCLA and even took up skiing, a sport she'd never had time to try as an elite figure skater.
She loved the feel of the cold air on her face when she was skiing. It reminded her of skating and two years after retiring, Alysa went to a local rink with a friend.
Alysa started skating for fun, and it wasn't long before she got the itch to skate more seriously. She called a former coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, and asked him what he thought about her coming out of retirement. At first, he wasn't a fan.
"I said, 'Please don't. I really did.' I said, 'Please don't. Respect your legacy,'" DiGuglielmo said. "We had a Zoom call for two hours. The story is I had a lot of glasses of wine over those two hours. And she talked me into a comeback."
The two started training together, and seven months later, Liu won a world title in a sport she left as a child but returned to as an adult.
On this Dying to Ask, The Road to Milan-Cortina:- The power of taking a break
- Re-thinking how we look at the role age plays in sports like figure skating
- A frank look at what young teen athletes give up to be the best in their sport and the impact that can have long-term on mental health
- And why Alysa's coach thinks she could pull off a two-year gap in training and emerge stronger than ever
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