Alysa Liu's Stunning Transformation Is Turning Heads

Every couple of years, television viewers and sports fans around the world are treated to the latest edition of either the Summer or Winter Olympic Games. And with each iteration of the international sporting competition and broadcast extravaganza, new stars are born (like Ilia Malinin) as observers are moved by athletes' tales of triumph and tribulation. In the United States, the Olympics have seen competitors like Mary Lou Retton, Apolo Anton Ohno (both of whom showed up on "Dancing with the Stars"), and others become pop culture icons. Most recently, it was figure skater Alysa Liu who joined the pantheon of superstar Olympians.

In early 2026, Liu emerged from a two-year retirement to become a double Olympic champion in women's figure skating. In doing so, she won over hearts with her quirky personality, laid-back approach to competition, DIY smiley piercing, and that signature halo hairstyle. Her carefree attitude notwithstanding, Liu grappled with significant pressure on her winding road to gold, undergoing a stunning transformation in the process.

From her atypical childhood and intense training to falling down, getting back up again, and, finally, rising to the top of the international skating scene, here's how Liu's awe-inspiring evolution played out.

Alysa Liu was born in August 2005 to father Arthur Liu, and the story of how she came to be only adds to the legend she has built amid her rise to Olympic glory. A Chinese dissident, Arthur first came to the United States in 1989 after participating in the Tiananmen Square protests. He eventually found his way to the Bay Area, where he studied law and began a career as an attorney. Arthur wanted to have a family of his own and, although he wasn't married, he was able to realize that dream via surrogacy, using anonymous egg donors.

As noted in a 2019 San Francisco Chronicle feature, Alysa, her younger sister Selena, and their younger siblings — triplets Julia, Joshua, and Justin — were delivered by two surrogates and raised by their father. "I had always wanted to have kids," Arthur told the outlet, "and I was already 40." Arthur's mother eventually traveled to the U.S. from China to help him manage his growing family. As reported by Today, Alysa started asking questions about her unconventional origins when she was about 8 years old, and eventually met her surrogate without even knowing it. "Alysa and a friend had almost figured it out on their own," Arthur told NBC Sports (via Today). "So, she wasn't surprised when I told her."

From a very early age, Alysa Liu was already well on her way to becoming an Olympic champion. Despite having no background in figure skating to speak of, Arthur Liu — who was a fan of U.S. skating legend and two-time Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan – made it his mission to mold her into an elite-level competitor. "I took her everywhere. I took her to Japan to learn from the top coaches there. I took her to Canada," Liu's father, Arthur, said during a 2026 interview on "60 Minutes," noting that he spent "half a million to a million dollars" on helping her become a skating champion.

By the age of 5, Alysa was fully immersed in the sport, and it wasn't long before she was competing on a national stage. When she was just 10 years old, Alysa competed at the 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, earning an intermediate gold medal in the process. She later competed on the junior circuit, winning a junior national championship at the 2018 U.S. Championships after posting what was then a record point tally.

Some of the techniques used in Liu's early training were particularly intense; at one point, she was even discouraged from drinking water. "They were like 'Water weight, you shouldn't drink water. You should gargle it.' ... It's insane," Liu recalled in a 2026 Rolling Stone interview.

After finding success at the intermediate and junior levels of figure skating, Alysa Liu made the big jump to the national circuit's senior level during the 2018-2019 season, making her senior debut at the 2019 U.S. Figure Skating Championships when she was just 13. And while she continued to bring home the hardware against top-level competition, she wasn't making her name on winning medals alone. Rather, Liu started doing things that had never been seen before on the ice.

While competing at the aforementioned event, Liu became the first American woman to land three triple Axels in a single competition. However, she took things to a different level entirely while competing internationally as a junior at the unsanctioned Aurora Games, landing a quadruple Lutz. She did so for the second time at the ISU Junior Grand Prix, which she won. It was the first time a U.S. female had landed the quad jump in international competition.

Nevertheless, Liu was notably low-key following her historic Grand Prix performance. "It's a good learning experience since it's only my first junior Grand Prix and one of my first big competitions this season," Liu said at the time (via ESPN). "I'm just trying to keep learning from this."

Alysa Liu leveled up in a major way in 2019 when she earned her first senior national title as a 13-year-old at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. The win made her the youngest competitor ever to capture the U.S. championship; a record previously held by Tara Lipinski (who looks totally different today). Liu's national title brought her mainstream attention; before long, she was appearing on popular television shows like "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon," "Today," and Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Sports Awards. Liu was so small at the time of her win, that she needed help from the other medalists to reach the top of the podium after competition.

Liu dominated the competition again in 2020, repeating as U.S. champion and becoming the first woman in seven years — and only the third ever — to win the title in back-to-back years. And she did so despite suffering a fall on a quadruple Lutz attempt. "I have fallen like that before so it wasn't like, 'Omigosh, what am I going to do?'" Liu said afterward (via NBC Sports). "I guess I knew how to recover from that and focus on other things. I relaxed the rest of the day and iced it so it wouldn't hurt any more. I just didn't let that fall get to me."

After winning two national titles and working her way onto the international circuit at the senior level, Alysa Liu realized her and her father's Olympic dreams in 2022 when she competed at the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Despite overtures from China — via a campaign to naturalize foreign athletes with Chinese roots — Liu competed as part of Team USA (avoiding the drama that beset skier Eileen Gu). Despite being the youngest member of the Americans' figure skating contingent at just 16, Liu handled the experience like a seasoned pro.

Facing a field of 29 other world-class skaters in the women's singles competition, Liu was in eighth place after the short program with a score of 69.50. Later, her free skate score of 139.45 ranked seventh-best, and she moved up one spot in both events when Russia's Kamila Valieva was disqualified. As a result, Liu finished in sixth place overall in the women's competition, a few spots away from an Olympic medal.

"Oh my god, I'm so happy with two clean programs," Liu commented after the Beijing games (via U.S. Figure Skating). "It's better than I ever thought I would do at the Olympics, and I'm really happy about it." Liu later used the momentum from her Olympic experience to a capture a bronze medal at the 2022 World Figure Skating Championships, making her the first American woman to medal at the event since Ashley Wagner in 2016.

Alysa Liu was at a crossroads following her third-place finish at the World Championships and a medal-less performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics. Despite her growing success on the ice, she had lost much of her love for figure skating when her father sent her to live and train in another state. "I took her to Colorado Springs and I left her there," Arthur Liu told USA Today in 2026. "She was upset and she missed home. But then I was thinking, when I was 14, I went to boarding school. I survived. I felt like (Alysa) can survive this, too. But not knowing that she hated it. I did not know until she came home."

Feeling the weight of her years of intense training and pushing herself to be the best (and being pushed by her father), the 16-year-old made the shocking decision to call it quits from the sport that had dominated her life since she was a small child. "I'm here to announce that I am retiring from skating," Liu wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post (via Town & Country). "I started skating when I was 5 so that's about 11 years on the ice and it's been an insane 11 years. A lot of good and a lot of bad but (you know) that's just how it is." Little did anyone know her decision to retire would set the stage for one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history.

While Alysa Liu's sudden retirement from figure skating in 2022 at the age of 16 may have been a shocker for fans and observers, it was a move that proved essential to her growth as a person as well as a competitor. "My mental health used to be horrible, like, absolutely horrible," Liu told Today in 2026. "And I just took a break, and I did something new. I moved on to a different part of my life. I really focused on school and friendship, and honestly, that's the thing that grounded me."

After removing herself from the figure skating scene, Liu utilized her newfound freedom to explore new ventures and make up for lost time. It was then that she took up the age-old tradition of learning how to drive. "I was able to go out more and hang out with my siblings more and go do things. So, that definitely helped," Liu said. "I looked really deep into myself for a long time." She decided to further her education, too, enrolling at UCLA to study psychology.

And while she ultimately decided that a career in the field wasn't for her, she was able to use what she learned to unpack some of the baggage from her abnormal childhood. Liu later espoused the benefit of breaking from routines, telling USA Today in 2026, "Sometimes taking a step back is what's needed to see the full picture."

While Alysa Liu is well-known for her technical acumen on the ice and her bubbly personality, her signature "ringed" hairstyle is arguably her defining feature. The two-toned, bleached blonde and brown look has some observers labeling her a "raccoon girl," while others implored her to revert to a more palatable look. In any case, there's no denying that Liu's hair has made an impression on the masses.

The now-iconic look dates back to 2023 when Liu decided she "just wanted to be a tree," as she revealed in a recent TikTok video with Paralympian Haven Shepherd. Liu went on to explain that she started with one ring, then added new rings each year thereafter. While the hairstyle began as a DIY project, Liu noted that she eventually turned to a stylist to get her rings brighter.

Liu's look has managed to inspire fans just as much as her figure skating skills. As reported by NPR, an increasing number of people are sporting the horizontal stripes themselves. " I feel like she's showing that hairstyles can reflect personal narratives instead of conforming to expected standards on stage or in sports," stylist Emmett Palmer told the outlet.

After her two-year sabbatical, Alysa Liu shocked the figure skating world for a second time by announcing her return to competition. As reported by NBC Sports, an 18-year-old Liu first teased her comeback via Instagram, where she shared a video compilation of training jumps and wrote a caption that included "this 2024-25 season" and "back on the ice." In a statement making her return official, Liu asserted that her time away from the rink was good, adding, (via U.S. Figure Skating), "I am beyond excited to begin skating again with my newly found perspective."

This time, though, she would be doing it on her own terms. She reached out to the coaches she trusted to help guide her, and made it clear she would have a voice when decisions were made about her costumes, music, and choreography. She would also be the final decision-maker where her diet and training regimens were concerned. Rather than deferring to her father or other authority figures, she would be the architect of her career.

Coincidentally, her love for skating was rekindled while she was enjoying another winter sport — skiing. "I love this feeling," Liu recalled thinking as she traversed the trail, per ESPN. "I need to train and be tired again. And the mountains are really far away and it's a day trip... The rink is right there. And if skiing feels just like skating, why don't I just skate? I need to not be so stubborn."

It didn't take long for Alysa Liu to reach new heights as a figure skater after her un-retirement. Liu finished as the runner-up at the 2025 U.S. Championships, before capturing gold at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships. In doing so, she became the first American woman to win the world championship since Kimmie Meissner in 2006. She later led Team USA to a gold medal finish at the 2025 World Team Trophy competition. Those events and others ultimately led her to the biggest stage of her career at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Liu started strong in Italy by helping the American women to a team gold, but the best was yet to come for her individually. After the short program in the singles competition, she found herself in third place with a score of 76.59. Impressive though that was, she was electric in the free skate, performing to Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park" and pacing the field with a 150.20 mark. The effort propelled her to the individual gold, breaking a U.S. medal drought that dated back to Sasha Cohen's silver medal in 2006.

After completing her comeback, she made it clear she wouldn't be defined solely by her skating success. "I don't need this," she said while clutching her gold medal after becoming Olympic champion (via Yahoo! Sports). "What I needed was the stage. And I got that. So I was all good, no matter what happened."

With her fairytale Olympics behind her and a pair of gold medals in tow, Alysa Liu returned to the U.S. as a bona fide star. Her name was in the headlines of every major outlet, she appeared on just about every major show one can imagine, and she was invited to a number of prestigious events. In the weeks after the games, she attended the Vanity Fair Oscars Party (in a custom Louis Vuitton dress, no less), after which she presented Taylor Swift — who was named after another famous musician — with the Artist of the Year Award at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards.

While speaking on stage, Liu managed to make Swift blush by giving her some of the credit for Team USA's performance in Milan, saying (via iHeartRadio/YouTube), "She lent her voice and music by narrating a video introducing me and the other 'Blade Angels.' I gotta say, I think that's why we won." Liu was also awarded with a key to the City of Oakland at a homecoming celebration that drew a reported 5,000 attendees, per The Guardian. "Every time she stepped on the ice, she carried the spirit of Oakland with her," said Mayor Barbara Lee at the event. Liu also met "Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe — who has undergone a transformation of his own — in the green room at NBC's "Today."

While she was originally set to defend her title at the 2026 World Figure Skating Championships, Alysa Liu ultimately decided to withdraw from the competition. In a March 2026 Rolling Stone interview, Liu revealed that she was also taking a break from school. That's not to say she won't be working, though. In the days after becoming Olympic champion, she told E! News that she had plans to tap into her passion for design. "I have work that I want to put out," Liu told the outlet. "I have creative ideas. I'm really into fashion and I love to express myself in any way and sharing my story and my life experiences."

She remains committed to headlining the 2026 "Stars on Ice" tour, too. One thing she won't do, however, is compromise her happiness for skating. "I pick hanging out with my friends over a session, and if that makes me a worse skater, so be it," she told Teen Vogue. "I don't care. I will jeopardize whatever."