All You Need To Know About Alysa Liu: Bio, Parents, Career

Retired American Competitive Figure Skater, Alysa Liu was born on August 8th 2005 in Clovis, California in the United States of America. Alysa Liu was born Arthur Liu who was an attorney who migrated from a small village named Sichuan in China to the Unite States after earning his degree.

Early Life and Education

Liu, the oldest of five children, was conceived by an unidentified egg donor and a surrogate mother, along with her siblings, Selina, a sister, and triplets called Justin, Joshua, and Julia. Yan “Mary” Qingxin, who Liu and her siblings refer to as their mother and who guards them legally even after her divorce from Arthur, was still married to her father when Liu was born. Selina, Liu’s younger sister, allegedly used to skate but gave up after losing her first competition, according to Liu and her father. Liu first spent three years in a Chinese school before switching to the Oakland School for the Arts, which at the time put a focus on figure skating. She started homeschooling at her father’s law office in between practices after she began missing too many classes due to travel to tournaments. She use the same web application as fellow skaters from the Bay Area Karen Chen and Vincent Zhou have used. At the age of 16, Liu completed high school in June 2021. After receiving numerous really harsh comments on her tweets, Liu also cut back on her use of social media since she felt it was exhausting and not worth it.

Career

When Liu was five years old, her father, a supporter of Michelle Kwan, took her to the Oakland Ice Center and taught her how to skate. With her first and earliest coach, Laura Lipetsky, a former figure skater who had studied under Frank Carroll, she started taking group classes before swiftly transitioning to one-on-one sessions. At the age of 512 years old, Laura Lipetsky started instructing Liu, and Cindy Stuart, Liu’s first choreographer, also began working with Liu. Liu participated in her first skating competition as a young skater in 2015, placing seventh at the Central Pacific Regionals. She won the intermediate gold medal at the 2016 U.S. Championships, becoming the youngest female skater to do so. She finished first in the short program, and in the free skate that followed, she performed two triple Salchows, the first of which she combined with a double toe loop to get a “program-high 7.00 points.”

Liu was included in the first Time 100 Next list in 2019. The article of recognition was written by Michelle Kwan. Liu has previously mentioned Alina Zagitova, Alena Kostornaia, and Anna Shcherbakova as some of her idols. At the 2019-20 Junior Grand Prix Final in Turin, Liu was spotted cheering for Zagitova with her former instructor Laura Lipetsky standing nearby in the spectators. Around the same period, Liu was also spotted raving about Kostornaia and Shcherbakova in interviews.

Liu announced via an Instagram story on January 7, 2022, that she had contracted Covid-19 and had withdrew from the free skate at the 2022 U.S. Championships later that day. Despite this, Liu sent her support to the other skaters and announced that she would be petitioning for her spot on the Beijing 2022 Olympic team alongside pairs team Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, who had to withdraw from the competition due to Covid. As part of its “naturalization initiative” to bring in foreign athletes for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Liu was seen as China’s top female recruitment possibility. But her father resisted being persuaded. It was revealed in March 2022 that Liu and her father, who had fled China as political refugees after taking part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations, had been the target of spies working, allegedly, under the direction of the Chinese government, in an operation to gather private information on Chinese political dissidents residing in the United States, in November 2021. One spy asked for copies of their passports while posing as a member of the USOC.

About Yan “Mary” Qingxin

Yan Qingxin, also known as Mary, was Arthur Liu’s ex-wife. Alysa Liu and her four siblings are also under her legal guardianship. The skater’s siblings and Mary are not her biological children. The siblings were all created using anonymous egg donors and surrogacy. They still regard Qingxin as their mother and address her as such in spite of this and the divorce.