Detroit — Alysa Liu smiled, but it seemed guarded. She stood at center ice at Little Caesars Arena, hands extended over her head, up on the tips of her skates. The music began. She eased into an oblong skating pattern near the perimeters of the rink, gaining speed. Then, with momentum built, she elevated for her challenging first jump. The triple axel is so difficult that Liu,13, is just the fourth United States woman in history, and the youngest by several years, to cleanly perform one. On Friday, she became the first to complete one in the short program at a U.S. Figure Skating Championship. Too young to skate in the World Championship and some senior competitions, Liu rapidly spun the 3 1/2 revolutions with the force necessary to complete it, at considerable height. Then, easing her momentum, she landed softly, like a cotton ball dropped to the floor. It stole the breath from many watching. Liu could feel it. More:Skaters with Michigan roots at top of pairs field after short program Her smile became unbound. Few can predict the course of an athlete's career, let alone that of a figure skater in early adolescence. But, a star might have been born in the city last night. The United States might have its long-sought “next” ladies figure skating luminary. As she continued to skate, the big smile never left her. Liu (pronounced “Lou”) ripped through the program with startling ease, feather lightness and bullet quickness. Her electrifying performance left her in tears of joy, with much of the audience on its feet. Other skaters began with triple toe loops and triple lutzs, and other jumps with fewer degrees of difficulty than the axel — named for the Norwegian skater Axel Paulsen, who first performed it in 1882 — with its forward take-off, requiring an extra half revolution to complete. Afterwards, in the mixed zone, where the 4-foot-7 figure skater from California walked by a gauntlet of media, a question was posed: “Did you think you’d hit the jump?” “Yeah!” Liu said, sounding like anyone’s teenage daughter. But, moments later, she told them, “I don’t skate to lose,” sounding like a gunslinger with dozens of notches in her belt. Bradie Tennell, the defending champion, had a lot to say about things, though. The favorite, entering the nationals in a women’s field depleted by retirements, apparent retirements, injury and health concerns, Tennell, 20, looked consummately at ease from the start. Her blistering pace, exacting elements and jumps injected with dramatic height, won the day. Tennell’s 76.60 score outpaced Liu’s 73.89. “I practiced really hard for this, and I know I’ve trained,” said Tennell, who had struggled through some of her short programs this season. “I love these program that I have. So, I’m excited to perform them this year. “I went out there and I just did what I do every day, and I just enjoyed my performance. There really wasn’t much thinking involved," she said. “I just kind of go out on autopilot and get in the zone.” Mariah Bell’s 70.30 would likely have been several points higher, if she had not struggled a bit to complete her triple lutz, triple toe-loop combination. “I had a little mistake, obviously, which I’m really bummed about,” said Bell, 22. “But, it’s an easy fix for the future.” It all sets up a fine night of skating Friday at the glimmering, new arena and on NBC. Amber Glenn, Hanna Harrell and Emily Ma are also within striking distance. At the post-skate press conference, with Liu, Tennell and Bell arrayed from left to right on the dais, a reporter sought to get a sense of how Liu ticks, especially at her age. “Alysa, what are you thinking, right now? Are you thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh! I can’t believe I’m up here having a press conference.’ Or, are you thinking, ‘I totally belong here.’?” In a quiet voice betraying bashfulness, Liu answered slowly, drawing considerable laughter. “I’m thinking about the press conference.” But, the warrior in the young person flashed as she answered the next question. Asked about her thoughts on international competition, even though it will be a couple of years before she can participate, Liu responded like a pro, flattering then strategizing. "I still watch international skaters,” she said. “I actually really like them. A lot of them are inspiration to me. “I think I need a quad to keep up with them, maybe, because a few of them have quads.” gregg.krupa@detroitnews.com twitter.com/greggkrupa<doc-sep>CLICK HERE if you are having a problem viewing the photos or video on a mobile device America, a star was born Thursday night in Detroit. Richmond teen Alysa Liu, the country’s most talked about skater in years, landed a difficult triple axel jump while warming up just before making her senior-level debut at the U.S. championships. Then the girl did it for real in the women’s short program to become the youngest American in history to hit the 3 ½-rotation jump at the championships. Tonya Harding and Kimmie Meissner are the only other skaters to land it at the event. Liu, 13, also breathlessly landed a triple flip and then a triple lutz-triple toeloop combination in the 2 ½-minute program performed to Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” She got downgraded minus 0.08 of a point for underrotating the last jump in the combination but it added up to a dominating performance that judges rewarded with 73.89 points. Yet, it was well behind reigning U.S. champion Bradie Tennell’s commanding show. The 2018 Olympic bronze medalist in team skating didn’t need a big triple axel to win the short program Thursday. Tennell hit a triple combination perfectly, a double axel and a triple flip for a strong technical performance. But it was the 5-foot-6 Illinois skater’s compelling spins that overcame Liu’s physical prowess. Mariah Bell, who finished 12th in the last two World Championships, underrotated the second of her triple-combination jump but still scored a season-best 70.30 points to take third place. Still, it’s going to be difficult to ignore Liu, who U.S. skating officials hope matures along with her big jumps. “You did it,” Oakland Ice Center coach Laura Lipetsky told her protege as Liu exited the rink overcome with tears. The tears continued when talking to reporters afterward. “I was really happy because I did everything I wanted to do,” Liu said with her voice cracking. She was the only one of the 18 competitors to try the triple axel, which is a forward starting jump that adds the half rotation. Only four American women have landed it throughout history. “She was so happy, that is why she was crying,” Lipetsky said. “It was tears of joy.” Liu will return to the rink Friday with plans to do two triple axels and become the youngest woman in history to win a U.S. title. That distinction currently belongs to 1998 Olympic champion Tara Lipinski, who was 14 when she won the U.S. title. It’s not only Liu’s extraordinary ice skills that distinguish her from everyone else in American skating. She has an unconventional backstory as one of five children conceived through anonymous egg donors and two surrogate mothers. “I like how I am different” from other kids, the outgoing Alysa told this news organization in 2017. The girl asked questions about her background at an early age, her father once recalled. “Daddy, why do I look different?” she would ask. “I don’t look Chinese.” Arthur Liu finally explained it to her at age 10: “You have a biological mother, you have a surrogate mother,” he said. Liu, 54, is an Oakland lawyer also rearing a 10-year-old girl and 9-year-old triplets (two boys and a girl) with the help of his partner and a community of friends. A year ago, Liu moved the family into a three-bedroom, two bathroom home in Richmond. Liu left China after the unrest highlighted by the Tiananmen Square standoff in the spring of 1989. Liu had studied and taught English in college in southwestern China where he grew up. His family has remained in the metropolis of Chongqing in Sichuan province. He earned a master’s of business administration at Cal State East Bay before getting a degree at UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Alysa is on a different path than her brothers and sisters who didn’t take to skating the way she did. Alysa spends as much as 8 hours a day at the Oakland Ice Center training under Laura Lipetsky, a former national-level skater who graduated from Cal. The two have been skating together since Alysa was 5½. The youngster stays at the rink to train as much as three times a day with coaches. In between, she does schoolwork with California Connections Academy, an online program that has been used by many elite skaters such as Palo Alto’s Vincent Zhou and Fremont’s Karen Chen. Alysa attended Chinese school for about three years before her father enrolled her in the Oakland School for the Arts, which has a figure skating emphasis. But she missed too much time because of traveling to competitions to stay in a regulated setting. Alysa needs the flexibility because of figure skating’s travel demands. Although she is too young to compete in major international competitions — she missed the July 1 age cutoff by five weeks — Alysa has visited prominent coaches in Canada and Japan in the past year. She also was taken in December to the Grand Prix final in Vancouver, Canada, by U.S. skating officials. Lipetsky has sent her protege to Los Angeles to work with famed choreographer Cindy Stuart, who has done the Disney on Ice shows. “I care about her so much, I give everything that I can to her because she only gets one shot,” Lipetsky once told this news organization. “She reminds me of someone that I was growing up.” Twenty-five years ago, 13-year-old Michelle Kwan finished second at the U.S. championships in Detroit, a stunning result that was overshadowed by the attack on Nancy Kerrigan in the hallway behind the rink. The Tonya Harding-Kerrigan saga dominated worldwide attention through the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. But Kwan’s rise is what captured the imagination of Arthur Liu. He used to pass the Oakland rink on the way to his legal office a few blocks away and thought about Kwan. The man brought his oldest child to a Saturday public session seven years ago. “She was walking on the ice right away,” Arthur Liu recalled. “Even in the first session, she was chasing adults, talking to them, making friends.” He immediately enrolled Alysa in a learn-to-skate program. Lipetsky saw potential and encouraged Liu to begin private lessons. Lipetsky, as the daughter of Russian immigrants who had to scrape by to pay for a career that included coaching from the renowned Frank Carroll and 1976 Olympian Wendy Burge Dickinson, felt a strong connection to Alysa. She has put in extra time to develop the girl’s promise. The dedication has produced welcomed results. Three years ago, 10-year-old Alysa became the youngest ever to win an intermediate-level national title. In 2017, she placed fourth in the novice division while attempting seven triple jumps. Last year, she won the junior title at age 12 — the youngest in the competition. She will be 16 by the time the 2022 Olympics in Beijing are held. It will be Alysa’s first season in which she is eligible to compete on the senior international circuit. — — — Tarah Kayne and Danny O’Shea, who were second in San Jose last year, won the pairs short program Thursday with 71.83 points. Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc were second with 70.47 points. In Bay Area results this week, Dinh Tran, a skater from San Francisco’s Tenderloin, won the silver medal in the men’s junior event for the second consecutive year. Related Articles Richmond’s Alysa Liu shows off mad skills in short program Figure skating’s next big thing? Phenom raised by immigrant single father The Bay Area 13-year-old who could reshape figure skating Madeleine Phan of Menlo Park and Laz Lune of Oakland were third in juvenile pairs, whereas Allison Zheng of Fremont was sixth and Kate Wang of San Francisco 10th in the women’s novice category. Alexandra Ortiz of Hollister and Clayton Ramsey of Portola Valley were last in intermediate ice dance while Oakland’s Mark Sadusky and partner Taylor Nordquist of Florida finished seventh in novice pairs. Sierra Venetta of Danville scored 47.77 points skating after Liu in the short program.<doc-sep>
DETROIT — A 4-7 breath of fresh air blew into the U.S. figure skating championships Thursday evening, barely visible above the boards on ice level. But then she started jumping, and the future of American women’s skating became crystal clear. Alysa Liu, at 13 too young to compete at the next three world championships, isn’t too young to make you wonder if she isn’t setting herself up, with a little luck and a lot of patience, to be a force at the next Winter Olympic Games in 2022 in Beijing. Liu, the youngest female skater in history to land the triple axel, the toughest triple jump there is, performed nearly flawlessly in the women’s short program, finishing behind only defending national champion Bradie Tennell, 76.60 points to 73.89. If she skates with the same unbridled joy in Friday’s long program, and lands the two triple axels she has planned, Liu will make the podium in her senior (Olympic level) national debut, one year after winning the junior national title. "The future looks great tonight," two-time U.S. Olympic coach Audrey Weisiger texted after the competition. Those are words that haven’t been said about American women’s skating in quite some time. Only one U.S. woman has won an Olympic or world medal since 2006 (Ashley Wagner’s silver medal at the 2016 world championships), and the three American women competing in last year’s Winter Olympics in South Korea finished a dismal ninth, 10th and 11th, the worst U.S. performance ever. Ascribing to the theory that there’s nowhere to go but up, U.S. figure skating begins the first year of a new four-year Olympic cycle with the hope that Liu, who trains in Oakland, Calif., is coming along at exactly the right time. She was asked if she thinks she is the future of U.S. women’s skating. She answered exactly as you’d think a 13-year-old would. "Actually I've only heard like a few people say that," she said, "but I don’t think too much about it." Tasked with the duty of making sure Liu continues to not think too much about it is her coach, Laura Lipetsky, herself a former national competitor who has coached Liu for as long as the kid has been skating. "I've worked with her since she was 5½ and racing around on public sessions," Lipetsky said. "Then she was in my 'tot' class. I really liked her personality, the way she just loved to skate." It’s the very rare skater who is coached by the same person throughout his or her career, from their earliest steps on the ice to the pinnacle of the sport. Brian Boitano did it with coach Linda Leaver, and an Olympic gold medal was the result. Weisiger coached three-time national champion Michael Weiss through the majority of his stellar career. Can Liu and Lipetsky pull it off? Time will tell. Patience isn’t a word usually associated with young female figure skaters, but it will be the watchword of Liu’s fledgling career under Lipetsky’s tutelage the next couple of years. Liu’s birthday of Aug. 8, 2005 makes her five weeks too young for the July 1 cutoff for this year’s junior world championships, and it will force her to miss the 2019, 2020 and 2021 world championships. Think of it: She would compete in the 2022 Olympics — if she indeed makes it there — before she’s allowed to compete in her first worlds. So Liu could come to dominate U.S. women’s skating and then have to sit home during the biggest event of the year. This is not all bad. "There are definitely positives," Lipetsky said. "We look at the positive of trying to grow as a skater: Trying to improve her speed, her skating skills, her maturity on the ice, and also including the quads as well, to be able to be competitive with the Russians. That’s what we’re aiming for, before we even compete with the Russians, trying to have the material, the goods, to compete against them." It sounds like the perfect plan. In three years, we’ll know if it worked. Follow columnist Christine Brennan on Twitter @cbrennansports.