Alysa Liu of the United States waves to the crowd after the women’s free skate during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games. Photo Credit: James Lang
Imagine training for years to get the opportunity to play your game on the biggest stage that your sport has to offer, but when that day arrives, you are miserable with anxiety from fear of screwing it up. Now, imagine the same scenario, but in this one, you compete freely with pure joy and appreciation for the opportunity.
Obviously, we would all choose the second option, but it’s easier said than done. That’s why it was so special to watch Alysa Liu skate at the Olympics. Her joy of performing was oozing from every part of her being as she skated to an Olympic gold.
For Liu, the greater joy wasn’t winning the gold, it was competing for it. On the evening of her gold medal performance, she told NBC, “I’m just really grateful for this moment, and I wish this free skate never ended.” She later added, “On the ice is where I’m the happiest.”
Too many people are attached to the outcome instead of just performing for the love of the sport that they play. What Liu understands, which is a great lesson for all athletes to learn, is that playing your sport is not about the trophy. It’s simply about enjoying what you do. In a November interview with Olympics.com, she explained, “Medals do not validate me in any way; that’s not how I feel validation.”
The downside of focusing on the outcome of winning a trophy is that it often causes athletes to freeze up and not perform at their optimum. Liu described how skating well and not focusing on winning a medal is the approach she took to the Olympics. She said, “Instead of trying to find that perfect moment that you always dream of, I just said that I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do every day. And I think that helped.”
The irony of Liu’s story is that because she wasn’t worried about winning a medal or being perfect, her golden moment at the Olympics was, well… perfect.
