Liu > Gu

W hen Alysa Liu won a gold medal in women’s figure skating yesterday, she became the first American to medal in the discipline at the Olympics since the 2006 Games. While her win is something for Americans to be proud of, we should be especially proud of Liu off the ice — both her background and the way she’s comported herself under immense pressure.  

Her story is especially notable — and admirable — when you compare Liu to her fellow Olympian, freestyle skier Eileen Gu. 

The similarities between the two athletes are hard to ignore. They’re both incredibly accomplished and talented women in their early 20s. Both are at the pinnacle of their chosen sports, and both have made multiple Winter Olympics appearances. Both are American-born athletes of Chinese descent who grew up in California.  

Yet Liu and Gu chose very different paths to the Olympics. After competing in her teens for the U.S., Gu made the decision in 2019 to instead compete for the country of her mother’s birth (the millions of dollars that the Chinese government has given her probably didn’t hurt). While she offered the anemic reasoning of wanting to “inspire millions of young people” in China and “to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations,” Liu’s story reminds us that, well, Gu’s adopted country isn’t really interested in forging friendships.  

Prior to the 2022 Olympics, China attempted to recruit Liu for its own Olympic team, but she and her father — who came to the U.S. as a political refugee after protesting the communist government in Tiananmen Square in 1989 — would not be persuaded. A couple of months ahead of those Games, they were targeted by Chinese government spies posing as U.S. Olympic officials seeking their passport numbers — actions the elder Liu believes were part of an effort to intimidate Chinese dissidents. He would only allow his daughter to participate in the 2022 Olympics if the State Department and U.S. Olympic Committee could guarantee her safety at the Beijing-based Games.  

Some might argue that Gu’s choice to compete for China is an “all-American” one, since she simply went where the opportunities were rosier and more lucrative. (Indeed, several U.S.-born athletes have made the choice to compete under other flags in this year’s Olympics.) But Gu’s willingness to, at the very least, turn a blind eye to China’s human rights atrocities makes her choice less defensible; plus, the highly compensated and highly decorated athlete hardly needed to compete under another country’s flag as a matter of professional survival. 

But the Liu vs. Gu comparison reaches beyond the realm of geopolitics: Alysa Liu has shown us the best of what an athlete can be and represent.  

Without a doubt, Eileen Gu has had a successful Olympics in 2026, winning two silver medals so far (at the time of writing, she still has one event remaining). But in a post-event press conference last Monday, Gu bristled when she was asked whether she considered her new hardware to be “two golds lost.” “I’m the most decorated female freeskier in history,” she responded. “I think that’s an answer in and of itself.” Similarly, she told Time in January, “The numbers say that I’m, competitively, the best freeskier that’s ever lived.” Gu may not have much reason to be humble, but let’s just say she rarely seems to exercise that option.  

Liu, on the other hand, seems to find the accolades that come with being a world-class athlete to be merely incidental to enjoyment of her sport. One of Liu’s most striking aspects (beyond her sure-to-be-trend-setting striped hair) is her joyfulness and nonchalance despite being in the competitive pressure cooker. “I don’t need this [medal],” she said after she won gold. “But what I needed was the stage and I got that, so I was all good. No matter what happened.” To view such an accomplishment as something that merely sweetens the pot is a mature — and graceful — way of prioritizing what’s important. Even in the moments following the news that she had clinched the gold — what may be the biggest athletic accomplishment of her life — Liu chose not to make the moment about her and was instead the first to congratulate bronze medalist Ami Nakai of Japan, who is competing in her first Olympics.  

Both Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu are undeniable talents. But it’s Liu’s performance at this year’s Olympics — on and off the ice — that should be considered among the biggest highlights of the Games, and that should truly inspire millions of young people.