The emotions I experienced out there were relaxed, serene and self-assured, Alysa Liu said, and less like a person who endured the largest night of her sport and more like a person who wanted to hear an encore.
This was the tone that corresponded to all that she was in Milan: the smiling countenance, the untidy smiles, and the halo-like hair which seemed likely to set off a second wave long distance south of the rink. Two years later, two years after a retirement at 16, Liu was back on the Olympic competition and left with a women singles, free-skating that seemed to be a party with blades, tight and loud and all hers.
The figures were supportive of the emotion. With a free skate to the song MacArthur Park suite by Donna Summer, Liu got a total of 150.20 and this subjected her to a total of 226.79 as indicated in the official results of the women free skating. The champion dish was typical Liu: seven triples, clean rhythm and a triple lutz-triple toe takeoff which paid off when the late pressure came around. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan was also directly behind her on the score card with Ami Nakai a rising teenager coming in third on the podium. Mone Chiba moved up to fourth.
To American women, the moment came with an added burden. It was the first American Olympic gold in the event since Sarah Hughes in 2002, and the first American medal of any kind since Sasha Cohen in 2006 the first felt like it was opening a door that had been closed.
Jump math was not the only thing that was separating Liu. Even the comeback had conditions: the right to a greater influence in training, the right to more control over exercises, the demand that the athlete, rather than the machine, defines the case. Liu has talked about coming back to compete with another type of intent of choosing an experience over surviving the experience, which she has mentioned regarding her approach to the creative process of the programs and presentation, which she was interviewed this season on Olympics.com. On stage, that translated to a performance that seemed spacious as she had time to hear the music before the next takeoff.
Even the competition surrounding her helped point out the difficulty of occupying such space. Sakamoto is a seasoned Olympic with an Olympic resume who dropped her points following an expensive jump error that ruined her combination. Nakai carried the challenge she had the triple axel and yet she was hauled down with the minute deductions and the make-up calls that can make the difference between the medals in modern women skating. And Amber Glenn, a U.S. teammate of Liu, created her own tie up, a jump over 13th to fifth overall, which was fueled by a free skate that was 3rd on the night with a score of 147.52, according to the event breakdown of the scoring. Resilience is a victory in a lot of ways, which ousted Glenn afterward, and put resilience in its own medal.
That was not so with Liu that was Olympic victory, which even smelled of a skater to be observed, not rescued. When I just watch the other people smiling, I must smile, because I see them in the audience, I said. In a game of possession, that mere transaction, athlete to mob, smile to smile, came to seem like the finest cut in the knife.
