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Post by Admin on Feb 5, 2019 18:37:11 GMT
At the U.S. nationals, the East Bay teen simultaneously blew away the competition by landing three clean triple-Axels in competition. She also charmed the national audience, with her dimpled grin, unselfconscious giggle and a new slogan of empowerment: “I don’t skate to lose.” She is so tiny that she had to be helped to the top podium by the two older girls she defeated.  A big jar of turquoise-colored homemade slime. “I love it,” she said of playing with the sticky substance. Yes, America’s new skating champion is a 13-year-old kid. Liu left Detroit with a championship last weekend and headed for a New York whirlwind, doing the “Today Show” and Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show,” which she handled with ease.  At the U.S. nationals, the East Bay teen simultaneously blew away the competition by landing three clean triple-Axels in competition. She also charmed the national audience, with her dimpled grin, unselfconscious giggle and a new slogan of empowerment: “I don’t skate to lose.” She is so tiny that she had to be helped to the top podium by the two older girls she defeated.  Now comes the tricky part. How to manage expectations, maturity, fame and physical changes as the whole world watches. We’ve seen young skaters soar into adulthood and others crushed by expectations. Bodies change, they get damaged, pressure comes from all directions. Liu is so young that, because of international competition age restrictions, she is unable to skate for the world championships in March, or in 2020 or 2021. She can’t skate even in the junior world championships, because her birthdate — Aug. 8, 2005 — is just short of the cutoff date. |
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Post by Admin on Feb 6, 2019 18:18:41 GMT
 She doesn’t seem to mind. “No, because then I get more time to practice,” she said, “before I have to compete against the best skaters in the world.” She is guaranteed to stay in the spotlight. She is one of the first skaters the United States has produced in decades who truly looks like she might be able to compete with the Russians and others on a technical level. In addition, she has a flow and grace that belies her age — Liu is less of a robotic jumper than some young American skaters we’ve seen. So, there will be huge expectations pointed toward the next Winter Olympics in 2022 — when she will be 16. Those Games just happen to be scheduled for Beijing, in her father’s homeland.  “I’m more focused on improving myself right now than on going to the Olympics,” she said. Liu breaks the skating mold in a couple of ways. First, her family dynamic is a bit different than that of a two-parent family, in which one parent often moves to a training destination with the skater and the other stays behind to finance the skating career. Liu is the oldest of five, raised by her single father, Arthur, an Oakland attorney. The children, Alysa, sister Selena, 11, and 9-year-old triplets — Julia, Joshua and Justin — were born to two different surrogate mothers (Alysa and the triplets share a surrogate mother) through anonymous donor eggs, and raised by Arthur. “I had always wanted to have kids,” Arthur said, “and I was already 40.” Arthur’s mother came from China to help when the children were little. For a time, the family lived in a one-bedroom apartment. Now, Arthur juggles his law practice with traveling to competitions with his oldest daughter. More on Alysa Liu |
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Post by Admin on Feb 10, 2019 18:06:17 GMT
Chinese-American Alysa Liu has made history by winning the 2019 US Figure Skating Championships. At the age of 13, she is the youngest person to hold a national title. Under current age limits, she will be too young to compete in the next three world championships. When she reaches age 16 in 2021, she will be eligible to take part in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Starting the new year in STYLE And the honors go to 🥁: - @nathanwchen - Alysa Liu - @usacycling Men's Team Pursuit squad  |
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Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2019 18:33:35 GMT
Liu had just won the national title at the age of 13, making her the youngest athlete to have done so, and with two triple axels no less. The weeks since have been a media frenzy. She appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and profiles on her meteoric rise have been published across the world. But for all the attention Liu has received, she won’t be able to compete in Worlds. She’s too young. A 1997 International Skating Union rule requires athletes to be at least 15 by 1 July preceding the season to participate in senior-level international events That poses a question: is 13 too young to devote one’s life to sports? How young is too young to be a full-time athlete? Liu’s childhood has been anything but ordinary. She usually trains four to five hours a day at the Oakland Ice Center under Lipetsky, who says in an email she spends so much time with Liu on a daily basis that “I feel like I am a mother to her.”  At the age of 10, Liu enrolled in California Connections Academy, an online program used by other elite skaters, to allow her the flexibility to travel for competition. Liu completes her homework between practices at her father’s nearby office. She eats dinner in the car on the way home and goes to bed around 8.30pm. Despite the rigorous schedule, her father, Arthur Liu told the San Francisco Chronicle, “She has lots of friends, has sleepovers. I’m trying to provide her with a normal life.” Lipetsky says that despite Liu’s age, she does not coach her any differently. “I want all my students to be able to be the best they can at any level they are in.” |
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Post by Admin on May 17, 2019 17:57:16 GMT
 The most promising American ladies’ figure skater to come along in the last 15 years, the reigning (and youngest-ever) national champion and the U.S.’s best bet for its first Olympic medal since the Bush administration is dying to know what she should call her slime. Alysa Liu made it at home by mixing Elmer’s glue with water and Borax, and now it’s on display, here on a steel picnic table near the entrance of the Oakland Ice Arena, this turquoise lump pocked with multicolored foam beads and air bubbles. “Alien Crisp?” she asks. “Or Alien Popcorn?” The 13-year-old Liu doesn’t linger on this question for long. Have you seen her favorite funny cat video on Instagram? You know the one—the cat gets brain freeze after eating ice cream? And you’ve got to meet her best friend. She has a lot of best friends at the rink but only one Best! Friend!, Juliana Newton, with whom she’s skated for seven years. They just bought matching yellow mini-backpacks at Ross Dress for Less; you must see them, too.  Under modern international judging standards, there is no more potent weapon than a quadruple jump. Quad Lutz, quad Salchow, quad Axel, quad anything: The quad is fast becoming ladies’ skating’s triple-digit fastball or step-back three-pointer—a once-anomalous physical triumph that promises to reorder the sport as it becomes more common. (It has been a fixture in men’s competition since the late 1980s, but only recently began figuring into ladies’ routines.) Liu wants a quad in her arsenal in time for her August international-junior debut. After nationals, she set a goal of landing quads consistently by mid-April so that she could work them into her choreography for the 2019-20 season. (Everything is going according to plan—she nailed five quad Lutzes in one recent workout.) She had first worked on a quad Lutz last summer while training for a regional qualifier, figuring she would make it to sectionals even if she missed the jump. Indeed, she locked up on her first attempt, improvised a second one and fell—and still advanced.  A word to the uninitiated: Skaters use harnesses to learn their jumps. A rope attached to the harness runs along a pulley on the ceiling and is controlled by the coach, who tugs it so the skater can learn how the rotations feel without gravity’s pull. Lipetsky clips Liu’s harness to the rope and they begin working on quad jumps. Liu skates backward into the approach, plants the toe pick on her right foot and lifts into four rotations. She lands softly (thanks to the harness) and glides backward. When Alysa skates, she cuts crisp edges across the ice so quickly that your eyes have trouble keeping up. One second she’s gliding backward, the next she’s prancing on her toe picks. And because she’s so small, when she jumps, she can go higher and spin faster. But something is wrong. Liu stops and skates over to the boards. She needs to hear Ariana Grande right now. She plugs in her phone and cues up several of Grande’s latest songs. Then, back in the harness. What’s riding on her mastering the quad? Nothing—just the hopes of a once-proud federation, the dreams of a high-spirited teenager, and the prospect of her father’s triumphant return to a nation he fled 30 years ago. “Quad Lutz isn’t that hard,” she says later. “It felt like a triple to me. But quad Sal [Salchow], I cannot do quad Sal. It is so hard, ohmygod.” |
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