Arthur Liu wanted nothing more in life than to see his daughter Alysa win a gold medal as a figure skater at the Winter Olympic Games.
He supported his daughter unconditionally in figure skating as a child, and he fell in love with the sport himself in the 1990s after fleeing China to become an American.
Alysa was a true prodigy, winning the senior national title for the United States women at 13. To prove it wasn’t a fluke, she defended her title the next year.
But the ascension stalled at her first Olympics in 2022, where Liu finished 6th in the women’s individual competition, and she promptly retired from the sport at 16.
She was burned out. She didn’t love the sport anymore. And Arthur, who had pushed her to greatness, had to watch as she walked away from it all before she reached her prime.
While it hurt him, he accepted her choice, and when she decided to return to skating years later, he had to hand his daughter the controls of her career.
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Alysa rediscovered her love for the sport, which she needed to take the next leap forward in her career, winning the women’s world championship in 2025 before winning two gold medals at the 2026 Milan Games.
While Arthur stood with the rest of Alysa’s family in the stands as she won on Thursday, he was where he was supposed to be: supporting his daughter but not overwhelming her with pressure from above.
In an exclusive interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes a month before the Olympics, Arthur revealed that he had spent upwards of over $500,000 to $1 million on Alysa’s career.
“I spared no money, no time,” Arthur admitted. “I just saw talent.”
Although a steep price to pay, his daughter became the main character of the Winter Olympics.
After heading into the Games with a little over 200,000 followers on Instagram, she now boasts over 3 million, the most by any figure skater in history on the platform.
