U.S. champ at 13, retired at 16, Olympic champ at 20; Alysa Liu's remarkable journey to top of Olympic podium

Veteran sportswriter Richard Deitsch takes an international view of the Olympics.

It came down to the final skater, as it often does in the Olympic Games. Ami Nakai of Japan. Alysa Liu of the United States. The world truly belongs to the youth — a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old competing for sporting immortality. 

“If she free skates this free skate clean, she will probably become the Olympic champion,” said NBC figure skating analyst Tara Lipinski of Nakai.

It was close. It’s always close at this level. Nakai was fantastic; Liu was otherworldly. The American skated with an overabundance of joy, jumping with athleticism and freedom, winning the crowd. Liu scored a season-best 150.20 to vault into the lead with a total score of 226.79, a personal best.

It was the completion of a remarkable journey for Liu, the youngest-ever U.S. champion at 13, followed by retirement at 16, and then coming back to win the world championships at 19.

When the scores came in for Nakai, she hit the board in bronze position. Kaori Sakamoto, the elegant world champion who announced her retirement prior to the event, finished second. Also a word for American Amber Glenn, who got zero points for an invalid element in her short program, a crushing mark that left the highest-rated U.S. figure skater in the world in 13th place after the short program. But Glenn was brilliant in the free skate. Her performance on Thursday included a spectacular triple axel and she earned a score of 147.52 to finish with a total of 214.91. That had her in first place until the final four skaters. She finished fifth.

But Liu walks away as one of the biggest stars of these Games. She is the first American woman to find gold in women’s figure skating since Sarah