A little over an hour after Team USA knocked off Team Canada to win the gold medal in women's hockey, another U.S. athlete returned the nation to dominance on the ice.
Reigning world figure skating champion Alysa Liu claimed victory in the women's singles event, scoring a 150.20 to secure the gold medal. On top of delivering Liu her second Olympic gold medal (following the Team Event 11 days prior), the win snapped a 24-year drought for Team USA.
Liu's win ended a streak of five straight Olympics where Team USA didn't have a winner in the women's singles event. Between 1956 and 2002, the United States won the event seven times in 13 Games.
Not only had Team USA failed to score a gold medal since 2002, they hadn't medaled at all since Sasha Cohen took silver in 2006.
From 2010 to 2022, Team USA failed to reach the podium in any of the women's singles events. It was a bit frustrating for the United States, as they had at least one medalist in every women's singles event since 1968 before that. They failed to medal only four times from the event's introduction in 1908 until 2006.
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Alysa Liu's ascent to greatness
Alysa Liu is no newcomer to the sport though. As mentioned earlier, she won the world championship in 2025 and finished third in 2022. She had previously won two U.S. championships in 2019 and 2020 when she was just a teenager and was coming off back-to-back second-place finishes in the 2025 and 2026 U.S. championships.
But now, at the age of 20, she is not only the Olympic champion, she has the opportunity to do something we haven't seen in decades: Go for another.
There have been only 13 multi-time medalists in women's singles, seven of whom have claimed gold, but only two that have won gold at least twice (Sonja Henie and Katarina Witt).
Can Liu be the first American to achieve the feat?