Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

You look at Alysa Liu, and you see a 16-year-old with braces, and it doesn’t seem possible she still is that young because of how much has happened to her in the past four years, all of it in the public eye.

Liu has gone through adolescence under the relentless glare of a spotlight she attracted in January 2019, at age 13, by becoming the youngest U.S. women’s singles champion ever. She was a prodigy who would bear huge expectations for two seasons before she was even eligible to compete at the senior level in her sport.

It all was so easy at the start, with one landmark achievement after another, a second U.S. title in 2020, victories on the Junior Grand Prix circuit, history-making triple axel and quadruple jumps.

Suddenly it wasn’t so simple, as one challenge followed another, including two surprising coaching changes and physical growth and injuries and a pandemic. As time passed, the kid with the infectious smile at 13 would look as if she would rather be anywhere but at a skating competition.

“I lost my motivation,” Liu said of the months following the onset of the pandemic. “I was barely going to the rink, not doing off ice (training).”

And then this Olympic season arrived, her first as a senior international competitor, and it became even more complicated.

There would be a coaching change in November that took Liu from her from the comfort zone of her San Francisco area home and family and friends to train in Colorado Springs. And a positive test for Covid after the short program at the 2022 U.S. Championships, forcing her to withdraw.

Then she would go to an Olympics in Beijing after she and her father, who was forced to leave China after he protested the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, were aware they had been