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Less than a month after winning Olympic gold, U.S. figure skating sensation Alysa Liu appears to have surprisingly pulled out of the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czech Republic.
Liu is no longer listed among the event’s participants on the International Skating Union (ISU) website. Her original spot is now filled by second alternate Sarah Everhardt.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Liu’s representatives for comment.
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Alysa Liu of the United States arrives to compete during the women’s figure skating free program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
The reason for Liu’s sudden absence from the roster was not immediately revealed.
The change comes just days after Liu revealed on social media that she was recently “chased” to her car by a spectator.
“So I land at the airport, & there’s a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras & things for me to sign,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “All up in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car bruh. Please do not do that to me.”
Liu entered temporary retirement shortly after her first Olympic appearance in 2022. Her father, Arthur Liu, said it was due to “trauma.”
“She became really unhappy,” Arthur Liu told USA Today about why she retired. “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.”
Before her appearance in the 2022 Beijing Games, she and her father were the alleged targets of a spying operation by the Chinese government. Liu called the experience “a little bit freaky and exciting.”
Gold medalist Alysa Liu of the United States poses for a photo during the medal ceremony for women’s single skating at Milano Ice Skating Arena during the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games Feb. 19, 2026, in Milan, Italy. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
“You know what I mean? It’s so … unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that’s crazy,” she previously told Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.
“Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like, in a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real. Like, I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from, like, everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
Arthur Liu told The Associated Press in 2022, “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. … I had concerns about her safety. The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”
Liu made her return to the sport just two years later in 2024. By March 2025, she was already making history for Team USA, becoming the first American to win at the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years.
Then, in February, she made history as the first American to win Olympic gold in a women’s individual figure skating competition since 2002 and the first American woman to medal at all in the event since 2006.
The historic win was followed by a massive surge in popularity.
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Alysa Liu of the United States performs in the women’s single skating routine during a figure skating exhibition gala at the Milano Ice Skating Arena during the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games Feb. 21, 2026, in Milan, Italy. (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Prior to the Olympics, she had less than 300,000 followers on Instagram. Just a week after the Olympics ended, she climbed past 5 million. Now, at the time of publication, she has more than 7.4 million.
However, it appears that many of her new fans now won’t get to see her compete in Prague.
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Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for Fox News Digital covering critical political and cultural issues in sports, with an investigative lens. Jackson’s reporting has been cited in federal government actions related to the enforcement of Title IX, and in legacy media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and ESPN.com.
