Alysa Liu has won back her lost glory at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. Less than four years ago, the then-16-year-old figure skater had temporarily retired from the sport after finishing sixth in the women’s individual category.
However, ahead of the 2022 Olympics, she also had to face a controversy that nearly ruined her career, decades after her father’s involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which forced him to take refuge in the USA.
All About The Beijing Winter Olympics Controversy With Alysa Liu
In November 2021, Liu and her father were targets of a spying operation that was allegedly “ordered by the Chinese government,” according to a PBS report published in 2022.
One of the men involved was Matthew Ziburis, who claimed to be a US Olympic & Paralympic Committee official and allegedly requested the passport numbers of Liu and her father, Arthur Liu.
As per the aforementioned PBS report, “Arthur Liu said he and his daughter were included in the criminal complaint as ‘Dissident 3’ and ‘family member,’ respectively.”
However, Liu’s father, a Chinese dissident from Guangzhou who had taken part in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, didn’t buy Ziburis’ claims. He also told Associated Press that the FBI had contacted him a month prior, and “warned about the scheme.”
When Ziburis and some of his accomplices were arrested on the allegation of spying on Chinese dissidents in the USA, Arthur expressed his concerns about the safety of his daughter at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Liu also later revealed her experience in a conversation at the USOPC Media Summit held in October 2025. “It’s so… unbelievable. 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 made sense to me, you know, from like everything my dad did back in his activist days.”
The 20-year-old figure skater also revealed that the FBI cooperated with her during such a tense situation, making her feel more secure ahead of her Olympic debut. “I went like to eat dinner with her [the FBI agent] a couple times. I mostly talk, because like, I’m also interested in what she does, like that’s so cool to me, just meeting with an FBI agent… I mean, not many people can do that. So I have so many questions and… I was so curious about like what she does.”
Liu returned to competitive skating in 2024. And at the ongoing 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, she clinched the gold medal in the women’s singles category in figure skating, denying the Japanese skaters a podium sweep they would otherwise have claimed.
