Olympic gold medalist in women's figure skating Alysa Liu attends the rally in Oakland on Thursday.
Hundreds of people flooded into Frank Ogawa Plaza outside of Oakland City Hall on Thursday to celebrate the return of Alysa Liu, 20, after her gold medal win in the women’s singles figure skating competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games.
The downtown Oakland celebration comes after weeks of planning by the mayor’s office, partner organizations, and Liu’s team, who asked for a fixed-location party in lieu of a parade through the city.
Sporting a bold striped brown and blonde hairstyle that she wore during her Olympic performance, Liu expressed her deep gratitude to the attendees and described her journey to fame.
“It’s been crazy how much visibility I have right now,” Liu said. “I would have never expected that, especially for figure skaters, we don’t really blow up like that.”
Liu, who was raised in Richmond by Chinese immigrants and began her skating career at the Oakland Ice Center, is the first woman from the United States to win any individual medal in figure skating at the Olympics since Sasha Cohen in 2006. Videos of her Winter Games championship performance to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” and exhibition skate to “Stateside” by PinkPantheress and Zara Larsson quickly gained popularity across the country, with each receiving millions of views on YouTube.
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and her office helped organize the Thursday rally to officially welcome Liu back to the Bay Area. She presented Liu with a symbolic key
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