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Team USA women’s figure skater Alysa Liu won gold in the women’s free skate final on Thursday, ending a 20-year drought for American women to medal in the event, and a 24-year drought to win gold.
The last American woman to win a singles figure skating medal at the Olympics was Sasha Cohen in the 2006 Turin Games, and the last American woman to win a gold medal in singles figure skating was Sarah Hughes, who pulled off that accomplishment in 2002 when the Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City.
She landed all her jumps and smiled throughout, and exploded into a demonstrative celebration after she finished. She was even heard yelling, “that’s what I’m f—ing talking about!’ and “holy s—!” while celebrating with her team.
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Alysa Liu of the United States competes during the women’s figure skating free program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Liu finished with 226.79 total score, 150.20 free skate score, 76.59 short program score. It was her season-best in free skate score.
But she still had to watch Japanese rivals Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai go after her.
Sakamoto was only good enough to come up just behind Liu. Nakai appeared to come much closer, as there was a noticeable tension in the crowd as judges reviewed Nakai’s moves before delivering her final score. But once they announced that Nakai had come up short, the crowd exploded in celebration for Liu.
Liu was the only American woman who qualified for a chance at the podium after Tuesday’s short program, as teammates Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito came up short.
All the pressure was on Liu to win a gold for the U.S. in an individual figure skating event after her teammates came up short, men’s star Ilia Malinin fell to eight place after two falls.
Liu has become a fan favorite for the U.S. this year, playing a key role in helping her country win gold in the team event after her dramatic comeback story. She only just returned to the world stage after a brief retirement following her performance at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Just prior to her appearance in the 2022 Beijing games, she and her father were the targets of a spying operationspying operation by the Chinese government.
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Alysa Liu of the United States competes during the women’s figure skating free program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Liu called the experience “a little bit freaky and exciting.”
“You know what I mean? It’s so… unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that’s crazy,” Liu previously told Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.
“Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like In a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real like I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from like everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
She hasn’t ruled out seeing her life, and experience in an international spying incident, adapted into a movie.
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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)
Still, she has some preferences if her story makes it onto the big screen.
“They gotta make me look like super cool hero or something. And just, I can’t just be the kid that got spied on and did nothing about it,” she said. “But honestly, I would just have the main focus be like my dad’s story, because like his story is so cool and like also just like everything that only happened because of what he did, so, like I feel like we got to start with the roots.”
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Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for Fox News Digital covering critical political and cultural issues in sports, with an investigative lens. Jackson’s reporting has been cited in federal government actions related to the enforcement of Title IX, and in legacy media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and ESPN.com.
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