By Brendan Ulmer
Ulmer Uninterrupted
Madelyn, my fiancée, is a huge fan of the Olympics.
Every couple of years, when those five rings are broadcast over NBC’s airwaves, it activates the long-dormant, nationalist part of her brain.
I, on the other hand, have never really cared that much. It definitely is a fun thing to throw on and watch all the niche sports that these athletes have dedicated their lives to. It just doesn’t often grip me.
Alysa Liu’s story, however, which only came across my desk after she had already won gold, has very much gripped me.
Liu, for those who do not know, is a competitive figure skater.
Her dad is a Chinese dissident who fled the country after participating in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. She grew up in the Bay Area and won her first singles figure skating national championship at the age of 13.
She was 16 years old when she participated in her first Olympics, placing 7th during the Beijing Games in 2022.
Later that year, she participated in the World Championships, where she placed 3rd.
Then, two weeks later, she was done. The world-class teenager retired from figure skating.
Her coach, Phillip Diguglielmo, shed some light on why she made such a decision in an NBC Sports article from 2024.
“She felt she had kept up her side of the bargain with her father and the skating community in general, which was always to go to the Olympics and be the skater everyone wanted her to be,” DiGuglielmo said. “After she achieved those goals, it was time for her to leave the sport on her own terms, on a high.”
What I think goes unstated in there is that she was burnt out. She had expended an endless amount of time and effort, sacrificing almost everything else in her life, and she didn’t even feel like she was doing it for herself.
In her time away from the sport, she spent more time with friends and even climbed up to Mount Everest Base Camp in 2023.
In 2024, she began skating again in secret and realized ‘Hey, I can still hit all these jumps’.
The most interesting part of this story to me is how she returned to the sport.
Liu decided she was now going to be skating for herself and herself alone. In alignment with this, she hired two of her former coaches, Diguglielmo and Massimo Scali, who had actually been fired by her father during the first leg of her career, to mentor her journey back on the ice.
She also laid out clear boundaries with Diguglielmo and Scali; she would be the one in control of the music, styling, and general creative direction of her programs.
When I think of American figure skaters, the image that comes into my mind is that of Nancy Kerrigan, prim, proper, refined. Liu is, decidedly, spectacularly, not that.
She is an alt, hair-dye-ing, crass, and enrapturingly individualistic competitor.
After finishing her gold medal-winning performance, she told NBC’s camera, in no uncertain terms, “That’s what I’m f___ing talking about!”.
According to her, she was never nervous about where she would place, in fact, she said she was excited to show people her art.
The lack of pressure put on her did not result in a lack of competitive edge, it resulted in a free, beautiful, and unburdened performance.
Much ink has been spilled on Gen Z and their attitude towards authority and their motivation to work. Liu and her story, to me, is what Gen Z culture is reaching for. Self-motivated achievement, free from the bondage of outside pressures.
“That’s what I’m f____ing talking about!”
Brendan Ulmer is a reporter for The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at brendan@hutchtribune.com.