Oakland Celebrates Alysa Liu Winning Olympic Gold With Hometown Rally

Olympic figure skater Alyssa Liu returns home to Northern California. Fans welcome her back to Oakland after her impressive gold medal win in this year's Winter Olympics. NTD's David Lamp reports. Crowds of people are showing up for Alyssa Liu for her homecoming rally in Oakland, California and people are saying it's not only her gold performance and her determination that struck them but how she looks so happy performing. I think she's just so relaxed, so calm and so inspirational and I think I'm not even a follower of figure skating and I was inspired just to see her determination and her bring home the gold. The comeback right, it's like comebacks aren't guaranteed no matter what you're doing so I think it's inspiring to see that she did it on her own terms. Liu previously retired at age 16 after the 2022 Beijing Games to enjoy a simpler life. The 20-year-old figure skater is an Olympic gold medalist known for her recent performances at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy in February. I was at the watch party at the ice center for that one and during the performance I mean it's like a four minute long performance and kind of after every jump the crowd in the ice center kind of gets louder and louder and it was it was a great energy and you know she hit everything walked off the ice and once she came off it was kind of this euphoria of like oh did we do it and seeing her win gold as well is just even better moment. Liu was born in California and was the youngest U.S. figure skating national champion in history winning the title at age 13 in 2019. She has said that it's about the journey and I feel like that's just a really inspiring attitude for all of us where it was really just about her getting back into ice skating again. You see the Olympics you see someone kind of from your hometown from your you know from your area and it's kind of an inspiring story. In Oakland, California, David Lam, NTD News.