gold medal

Alysa Liu is stepping away from skating again.

The first time, following her bronze medal at the 2022 world championships, Liu considered herself retired at age 16.

This time, six months after becoming the first American woman to win Olympic gold in skating since 2002, the 21-year-old athlete says she’s simply taking a year off from the sport and is already planning her return.

“I will not be competing this season,” Liu wrote Monday on Instagram. “I always want to challenge myself in new ways, so my artistry & skating can evolve. It’s important to me that my sport reflects my personal growth. I’m gonna take the time to recalibrate, fine-tune things & whatnot.

“So fear not, I’ll be back, & in the meantime I’ll be rooting for my teammates near & far. See yall soon!!”

Born in Clovis and raised primarily in Oakland, Liu won back-to-back U.S. championships in 2019 and 2020 at ages 13 and 14. In February 2022, she finished seventh at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

Less than two months later, Liu announced on Instagram that she was “done with my goals in skating [and] i’m going to be moving on with my life.”

During her two years off, Liu hiked to Mount Everest base camp with friends, enrolled at UCLA and focused on herself.

“I found what I like and what I didn’t like,” Liu said earlier this year. “Really got to know myself, because [when] I had skating, I didn’t really know myself. I couldn’t know myself. I only ever did one thing.”

She returned to skating in 2024 on her own terms, with a new look that included a halo hairstyle and a “smiley” piercing in the tissue connecting her upper lip to her gums. A gold medal at the 2025 world championships set the stage for her triumph at the Milano-Cortina Games.

While her last break was an effort to get away from skating, Liu told NBC Sports that this time she will continue training to improve her “overall artistry, spins, jumps, everything.”

“I really want to improve my skating, and I wanted to take the time to do that for myself and just to evolve, and then I’ll be back after that is done,” Liu said. “But I’ll still be cheering on all my competitors and my teammates, and I’m really excited.”

She added that “logically and emotionally and physically, this just makes the most sense” and “I just felt this was right. So I’m trusting my instincts.”

When it comes to fear of heights, Maddi Haferling was born with the opposite gene — loving heights.

The Woodbridge High senior started climbing a door at home at age 4 trying to reach a pull-up bar. By 10, she was signed up for a climbing academy. At 17, she won a gold medal in speed climbing last week at the USU19 National Championship in Salt Lake City.

On Thursday, she leaves for Arco, Italy, to compete at the Youth World Championships.

“It’s pretty cool,” she said.

At 5 feet tall, her challenge is climbing a standardized 15-meter wall course and finishing with the fastest time going against an opponent climbing an identical course. She’s attached to a safety rope in case there’s a fall.

Maddi Haferling of Woodbridge won a gold medal in speed climbing.

(Haferling family)

Being a climber, I have a lot of strength that oust don’t have,” Haferling said. “I can do 25 pull-ups that can impress you.”

So what happens if a Woodbridge football player challenges her to a pull-up contest?

“I think they know they’d lose,” she said.

She trains five days a week, three hours a day at a Santa Ana climbing facility lifting weights and practicing speed climbing techniques with other team members.

“It’s nice I can push myself in a sport and commit to something,” she said. “Being on a team is amazing.”