Bay Area teen Liu has all the big jumps to defend her U.S. skating title at nationals
OAKLAND >> Now comes the encore for Alysa Liu, the Bay Area teen who dazzled the American figure skating community a year ago.
Liu, 14, begins the defense of her U.S. title Thursday night in the women’s short program at the national championships in
Greensboro, North Carolina.
She enters the competition as the most technically gifted skater in the field while trying to become the youngest athlete in history to win back-to-back crowns.
Yet Liu said she doesn’t feel the mounting pressure as defending national champion: “I don’t really worry about it,” she said last week.
The U.S. championships in Greensboro and next year in San Jose are the only senior-level competitions Liu can enter until 2021-22 when she is old enough to compete in the Beijing Games.
Liu’s low-pressure attitude represents the philosophy of longtime coach Laura Lipetsky, a tutor as unassuming as the blocklike Oakland Ice Center where Liu trains.
“There isn’t any added pressure being in the current position that we are in because we both focus on what we can control and block out the rest,” Lipetsky said this week.
The more Liu has risen in skating the more Lipetsky has tried to shield her from the trappings of a sport steeped in glamour
and outsized egos.
Liu is a confident high school sophomore whose universe is the insides of a frozen rink in downtown Oakland that cries blue-collar in appearance.
“This year’s competition will not be treated any differently than previous ones,” Lipetsky added. “Our continued preparation is to learn from the past and live in the current moment.”
Her protege mimics the message by saying all she wants to do is to show judges and audiences improvement each time out.
In reality, everyone comes to see Liu’s big jumps. The 4-foot-10 skater from Richmond included two quadruple lutz and two triple axel jumps during the Junior Grand Prix season when she finished second at the championships last month in Turin, Italy.
But Liu’s coach and choreographers have created a less ambitious program for the U.S. championships in order for the skater to showcase her improving spins and fluidity on the ice.
“Things change unexpectedly going to nationals,” Liu said of the possibility of adding a second quadruple jump to the free skate Friday night. “For now, everything is going pretty well so I am doing two triple axels and a quad lutz.”
Since Liu won the U.S. junior title in 2018 in San
Jose she has been known for landing difficult jumps. But Liu has said repeatedly she wants to be more than a “jumping machine.”
“She wants to be known as the complete-package skater,” Lipetseky said.
In an effort to make it happen, Liu stayed in Italy after the Grand Prix Final last month to work with Italian Carolina Kostner, the 2012 world champion and 2014 Olympic bronze medalist. Kostner skated like a prima ballerina during her storied career.
Liu also has begun working in Oakland with a threetime Olympic ice dancer, Massimo Scali of Italy. He is helping Liu improve her choreography and skating moves, father Arthur Liu said.
The jumps, however, set Alysa apart. It’s doubtful any of the other favorites to win a medal this week would attempt even the triple axel, a 3 ½-rotation jump that is launched on a forward outside edge of the blade. The quadruples — four rotations in the air — are not even part of the conversation.
Yet, Bradie Tennell and Mariah Bell, who finished second and third to Liu last year, have had slightly better scores on the international circuit this season.
It is not a perfect comparison because the women performed in front of different judges. Tennell, 21, and Bell, 23, skated on the senior level whereas Liu still competes as a junior. Unlike international policy, U.S. Figure Skating permits someone Liu’s age to enter the senior competition at the national championships.
Whatever the scores say, Liu is the United States’ future because she currently is the only athlete with the technical ability to succeed on the world stage. In December, Liu was the first American woman to advance to the Junior Grand Prix Final since Polina Edmunds of San Jose in 2013.
Liu won the silver medal at the competition to become the first American medalist in seven years.
Liu represents a growing contingent of Bay Area skaters
competing at the highest level this year. Fremont’s Karen Chen, a Cornell University freshman who has skated infrequently since competing at the 2018 Winter Olympics, is attempting a comeback from injuries.
Sierra Venetta of Danville and Gabriella Izzo, a Greenbrae native who trains in Massachusetts, also are listed among the women competitors.
Vincent Zhou, who grew up in Palo Alto, has taken a gap year at Brown University to try to keep pace with world champion Nathan Chen. Zhou, who finished third at the 2019 World Championships and is a three-time U.S. medalist, will be joined by San Francisco’s Dinh Tran in his senior debut.
Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko of Morgan Hill are entered in ice dancing and Jessica Pfund of Los Gatos and partner Joshua Santillan are skating in pairs.
Other than Chen, no one will be more scrutinized than Liu, who is not eligible to compete as a senior in international events until the 2021-22 season that includes the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Liu was an overnight star a year ago when becoming the youngest U.S. champion in history at 13 years old. She made history in the short program as the first American woman to land a triple axel. Then Liu stole the scene by becoming the first woman to land two triple axels in any free skate.
Arthur Liu and Lipetsky
have downplayed the accomplishments because they say Liu’s goal is to become the world’s best.
“She is pushing the limit every day to be the best that she can be,” Lipetsky said.
Liu is the oldest of Arthur Liu’s five children who were conceived through anonymous egg donors and surrogate mothers. Arthur, who practices law a few blocks from the Oakland ice rink, has a partner who helps him take care of the children at their Richmond home.
Alysa takes online courses because she spends as much as nine hours a day at the rink. Her life has come under the microscope because some question the risks of her singular pursuit.
“I don’t think anyone should be worried about me,” Liu said. “I don’t go above my limit. I’ll keep pushing that limit, but before I push the limit I am training off-ice and do everything I can so I won’t get hurt.”
The big question is how much will Liu grow between now and the Beijing Games when she is 16 years old. On the international level, stickfigure junior skaters often outjump the more accomplished seniors.
Liu said she pays more attention to eating well and exercising to ensure she can land big jumps as she matures.
“I’m not too worried about what will happen in the future, like will I lose any jumps,” Liu said. “Honestly, right now I am doing a pretty good job at maintaining myself.”