“We’re going to try to make it as natural as possible for him. He’s going to live his life out here."
Alysa Liu, the 20-year-old figure skater who won two gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, posted a blunt message on her Instagram Stories after a crowd swarmed her at a U.S. airport. Someone, she said, chased her all the way to her car.
“Please do not do that to me,” she wrote.
The encounter happened just weeks after Liu became the first American woman to win individual figure skating gold since 2002. The speed of that transition — from competing abroad to being pursued by strangers at home — captures something specific about how fame works in the Olympic cycle.
Liu described the airport scene on Instagram Stories on Wednesday, March 4, after landing back in the United States.
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“So I land at the airport, & there’s a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras & things for me to sign,” she wrote. “All up in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car bruh. Please do not do that to me.”
The timeline is compressed to the point of whiplash. Liu skated her gold medal free skate program, set to “MacArthur Park” by Donna Summer, during the women’s final on Feb. 19 in Milan. She also won gold earlier in the Games as part of the United States team figure skating competition.
By early March, she was back in the U.S. navigating a packed media schedule that would wear down most seasoned celebrities. Since returning from Italy, Liu has appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and Today, where she met Daniel Radcliffe. She visited Simu Liu and the cast of Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum Theatre. She appeared on the cover of Teen Vogue.
That’s an extraordinary density of high-profile appearances crammed into a narrow window. And somewhere in the middle of all those commitments, she landed at an airport and got swarmed.
In an NBC interview following her Olympic victory, Liu was asked how she would handle “superstardom.”
“I have no idea how I’m gonna deal with it. Probably wigs. I’m gonna wear some wigs when I go outside,” she said, before grinning and adding, “Nah, I’m playing.”
Liu’s media schedule since the Olympics has been extensive and shows no signs of slowing. But the airport incident, and her public response to it, suggest she’s working out the boundaries of that visibility in real time.
