Alysa Liu Leads U.S. Women With Seventh-Place Finish in Beijing

When Alysa Liu tested positive for COVID-19 between the short program and the free skate of the 2022 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships, she thought her Olympic hopes had been dashed.
 
Just over two months later, she was the highest-scoring U.S. woman at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.
 
Liu placed seventh overall in her first Olympic appearance. Teammates Mariah Bell placed 10th and Karen Chen finished 16th.
 
"Oh my god, I'm so happy with two clean programs," Liu said. "It's better than I ever thought I would do at the Olympics, and I'm really happy about it. I honestly just wanted to do two clean programs, and I can believe it, but I can't believe I actually did two clean programs. Like, I can, because I trained so much, but like, I can't. Everything has been really crazy."
 
Crazy is an understatement when it comes to the controversy surrounding the women's event in Beijing. Ultimately, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, representing the Russian Olympic Committee, took gold and silver, while Japan's Kaori Sakamoto won bronze.
 
Liu finished with a total score of 208.95 points, earning 139.45 points for her free skate to Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D op.35 by Joshua Bell.
 
At just 16 years old, Liu was unsure how she would hold up on the world's biggest stage.
 
"It's the Olympics," she said. "Ever since I was younger, I thought I was going to be so nervous here. I wasn't super confident that I was going to do clean programs, and I did."
 
Following her free skate, Liu cried in the green room and again when speaking with media – tears of joy not only for herself, but for how well her friends did.
 
She counts Yelim Kim (South Korea), Wakaba Higuchi (Japan), Young You (South Korea), Mana Kawabe (Japan), Loena Hendrickx (Belgium) and Bell as some of her dearest friends, and is over the moon about how they all performed.
 
"I'm going to cry again, but everything here was just really fun," Liu said through tears. "It's really emotional because we all did so well, and I'm really proud of them. We worked a lot, so I'm glad they did well and I'm glad I did well."
 
Bell, who was in the green room before Liu was, was able to intercept her on her way there to give her a hug.
 
"It was cool to see Alysa skate so well," Bell said. "You want it for everybody. You want everybody to have their moment because we work so hard."
 
Ultimately, Liu says her first Olympic experience exceeded her expectations and is the most fun she's ever had in figure skating. While the controversy made a lot of noise, she didn't let it get to her.
 
"When I skate, I don't really think about it because I'm skating, so I'm like, 'I've got to focus on this jump and so I don't fall on these rockers,'" Liu said. "And it didn't bring my spirits down, either, because I'm at the Olympics. I don't think anything could."
 
Bell placed 10th with 202.30 points overall, earning 136.92 points for her free skate to "Hallelujah" by k.d. lang.
 
After a fall in the short program, Bell skated a clean free skate and had the Olympic moment she'd always dreamed of.
 
"It means everything to me," Bell said. "Coming in, I just wanted that moment, and you really want to have that moment after a long program. After a short is great, but after a long is the last thing that you leave on the ice, so to be able to do that, I'm just really proud."
 
After having to fight to stand up on some of her jumps, Bell's prevailing emotion when she finished was just pure relief.
 
"I was just really, really happy and proud," Bell said. "There were a lot of nerves, obviously. It's the Olympics, and you just want to represent your country well, and yourself. And I was able to do that. It feels like I'm in a dream, and I hope I don't wake up."
 
Bell's Hallelujah free skate has been a strength for her over the last few seasons, competing it with very few errors.
 
"I was thinking about that today, and I was like, 'Well, I hope today's not the day that it doesn't go well,'" Bell said with a laugh. "I was really proud of how it went, and it's just a really special program to me. I can really be in the moment. It's hard not to think of the Olympics as something different, but it really isn't, and I was just really in the moment and enjoyed it."
 
In her second Olympic appearance, Chen finished 16th with 179.93 points. Her free skate to "Butterfly Lover Concerto" by Takako Nishizaki earned 115.82 points.
 
"Right from the get-go, it was rough," Chen said. "Like three seconds in, I already tripped, and I didn't even get to my first jumping pass yet. So it was definitely a struggle right from the beginning. I don't really know exactly what went wrong, but I do know that I never quite got my feet underneath me. I just felt a little bit off, and I was fighting to pull in on everything and stay upright. It was a hard performance to get through."
 
Despite being disappointed with the performance, Chen knows that her accomplishments are still noteworthy. She medaled in the team event to kick off her time in Beijing and is the first U.S. woman to make back-to-back Olympic teams since Sasha Cohen in 2002 and 2006.
 
"I remember in 2018, I got off the ice and I was like, 'I'm going to go for another four years,' and it's incredible to just know that I've made it here," Chen said. "Yeah, it didn't go the way I wanted it to, but I also had my moment in the team event too, where I did skate much better. So there's a lot of positive things to look at. I know that currently, in my head, I'm still processing what happened, and negative emotions usually overpower the positive ones, so I'm dealing with that right now. But I think it's been such an incredible experience.
 
"These bad skates don't define me, and I have so much more to offer, whether it's skating-related or non-skating-related. I'm just so proud of what I've gone through here, and I hope to continue to improve."