As one of the faces of US Olympic figure skating, Alysa Liu wouldn’t have gotten to where she is now without the incredible support of her parents.
Alysa Liu was hailed as an ice skating prodigy from the young age of 5 and held out a promising future. She competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics at 16-years-old and shocked the skating community by announcing her retirement shortly after. Fast forward to 2026, Alysa’s back on the ice and chasing after the gold medal in the women’s short program at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Who is Alysa Liu’s dad, Arthur Liu?
Alysa Liu’s dad is Arthur Liu. Her father was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and emigrated to the US, where he started his own law firm. He has five children, including Alysa, with different anonymous egg donors. When Alysa was 5-years-old, he brought her to the Oakland Ice Center, and she trained under Laura Lipetsky.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Arthur Liu revealed that he has spent between $500,000 to $1 million for his daughter’s skating career. “I spared no money, no time. I just saw talent.”
At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Arthur and Alysa were targeted in a spying operation that the US Justice Department alleges was ordered by the Chinese government.
“They are probably just trying to intimidate us, to … in a way threaten us not to say anything, to cause trouble to them and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China,” Arthur Liu said. “I had concerns about her safety. The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”
“I’ve kind of accepted my life to be like this because of what I chose to do in 1989, to speak up against the government. And I know the Chinese government will extend their long hands into any corner in the world,” Arthur Liu said. “I’m going to continue to enjoy life and live life as I want to live. I’m not going to let this push me down, and I’m not going to let them succeed.”
Throughout her retirement, Arthur supported her through the tough times. “She became really unhappy,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “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.”
Arthur has had a hand in Alysa’s coaching directly, by firing and rehiring Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali. “Once in person, and two by text,” Phillip DiGuglielmo told 60 Minutes. When asked if he was a “tiger dad,” Arthur said that he was a “laissez-faire dad” by constantly monitoring his daughter’s coaches during practice.
When she was coming out of retirement, she reached out to both of her former coaches and made it clear that she wanted to have more say in her training and her programs and that she would compete because she wanted to.
Who is Alysa Liu’s mom, Yan “Mary” Quinxin?
Alysa Liu was born with an anonymous egg donor and surrogate mother. According to a report by Sports Illustrated (via Romper), Liu’s donors were white women in hopes that his children would “benefit from a diverse gene pool.”
Arthur currently considers himself a single father. However, Alysa and her siblings were also raised by Arthur’s ex-wife, Yan “Mary” Quinxin. When Alysa was 8, she noticed that she and her mother had different physical qualities. “That’s how I figured out she wasn’t my real mom,” the Olympian told the magazine, “because she was Asian and I did not look Asian.”
Lea Veloso
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