As news of Alysa Liu stepping away from the 2026 World Figure Skating Championships made headlines in recent days, the Olympic champion’s interview about the “insane” realities behind competitive figure skating has now gone viral.
The timing of her unexpected withdrawal and the Rolling Stone interview published on Saturday, March 7, have sparked heated debate among fans about the pressures elite figure skaters face behind the scenes.
Highlights
- Alysa Liu opened up about the “insane” training rules she faced as a young skater, revealing the extreme pressures that once drove her to retire from the sport at just 16.
- The interview clip has gone viral after Liu abruptly withdrew from the World Figure Skating Championships, fueling debate about what may have pushed her away from competition.
- Her confession stunned fans, with many criticizing the harsh realities of extreme sports training culture and its toll on athletes.
The 20-year-old star revealed that the sport’s demanding rules and relentless schedule once pushed her to retire at the height of her career, prompting one netizen to react, “The saddest thing about it is that there are still people… who are trying to justify t**turing a child this way.”
2026 Winter Olympics gold medalist Alysa Liu recently revealed a training rule from her early career that forced her into a brief retirement
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This past weekend, news of Alysa Liu’s withdrawal from the 2026 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czech Republic, set to begin on March 24, broke.
The International Skating Union (ISU) had listed her name as a participant in the competition in mid-January, and even after the Olympics final, on February 26, the organization published the official entry list, which still included Liu as a headliner alongside teammates Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito.
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However, last week, an updated entry list for the Prague championships showed that Liu had been replaced by 19-year-old Sarah Everhardt, who will be making her debut at the World Championships.
As fans voiced their concerns for the well-being of the star athlete, she shared on her Instagram Story, confirming her abrupt departure, “Hellooo, as some of y'all already know, I withdrew from Worlds.”
Image credits: Rolling Stone
“There's been a lot of exciting things happening since my return from Milan, so I'm taking some time for that... see y'all next season!!" her message concluded.
The update came shortly after a scary airport experience with fans following her return to the U.S. after the Games, which Liu described in a now-deleted Instagram Story.
The 20-year-old described the pressure and the extreme figure skating rules she faced as a youngster as “crazy” and “insane”
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She wrote, “So I land at the airport, and there’s a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras and things for me to sign. All up in my personal space.”
“Someone chased me to my car, bruh. Please don’t do that.”
While the exact reason for the sudden move remains unknown, a segment from Liu’s Rolling Stone interview has gained significant traction online.
Image credits: alysaxliu
When interviewer Alex Morris asked Liu about the extreme training regimen she underwent as a young star, saying, “You were literally told like, you can’t drink water, you can’t… Everything was monitored. Everything was controlled,” Alysa revealed the pressure to maintain an extremely low weight.
Agreeing with Morris’ statements, she recalled, “Yes, yeah! It was crazy because like, they were like ‘Water weight, you shouldn’t drink water,’ You should gargle it. It’s crazy. It’s insane.”
The gargle method was reportedly put in place for her to manage her thirst without adding water weight.
Image credits: alysaxliu
The confession sparked intense backlash against the figure skating system on social media, with some netizens even calling it “child ab*se.”
One user fumed, “Alysa Liu just exposed figure skating’s craziest ‘hack’: gargle water but don’t swallow it. Next-level body t**ture in the name of gold. Mad respect for calling it out - athletes aren’t robots.”
Alysa sparked widespread concern following her abrupt departure from the World Championships just 16 days before its scheduled start
Image credits: alysaxliu
Another fan added, “I get wanting to keep track of metrics for athletes, but that’s f**king crazy. Reminds me of race horses where they give them a sh*t ton of diuretics before races, making them p*ss for a long a** time to cut on weight.”
“Alysa was burned out by the pressure of what she was ‘expected’ to do, and by others who were overly involved in her skating life…” expressed a third user.
Image credits: alysaxliu
Others said, “A healthy and balanced life is more important than being a competition machine.”
However, some argued that the intense early training actually helped Liu secure the gold medal in both the women’s singles and team figure skating events at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Liu revealed in the viral interview that during her teenage years, nearly everything was “monitored” and “controlled,” leading to significant burnout
Image credits: alysaxliu
One person wrote online, “Alysa’s story is actually more complicated than just freedom good, control bad. Those super hard, disciplined, controlling years probably did build the insane muscle memory and technical base that later helped her win. If she had total freedom as a kid, she probably wouldn’t be the same skater.”
The same user continued, “But at the same time, her story also shows that getting results doesn’t automatically mean the process was healthy. That training may have built the athlete, but when she got older and took back control, that’s when the joy, artistry, and real version of her came out…”
Reportedly, exhausted by the extreme demands of the sport, Liu retired from skating at age 16 following the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Addressing her brief retirement, Alysa’s father, Arthur Liu, recently told USA Today, “She became really unhappy. She avoided the ice rink at all costs. She’s traumatized. She was just traumatized. She was suffering from PTSD, and she wouldn’t go near the ice rink.”
Image credits: Rolling Stone
After two years away, she returned to the sport in 2024 with strict boundaries, including full autonomy over her diet and training.
Addressing her comeback, which led to her winning gold at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, Alysa told 60 Minutes in a January interview earlier this year, “I get to pick my own program music. I get to help with the creative process of the program.”
"If I feel like I'm skating too much, I'll back down. If I feel like I'm not skating enough, I'll ramp it up. No one's gonna starve me or tell me what I can and can't eat."
This self-directed approach clearly paid off, as Alysa won two gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics last month, despite reportedly consuming an athletically unconventional diet rich in carbs and sugars, including pasta, chocolate lava cakes, and vegetables.
“Even though she had a lot of bad, as she said in the interview… without those years of training, skating would not be so automatic for her,” wrote one netizen
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