MILAN (AP) — Alysa Liu is back at the Olympics on her own terms, and she's thriving on the U.S. team.
Four years ago, Liu went to the COVID-hit Beijing Olympics as a 16-year-old who despised how skating and endless hours of practice had taken over her life.
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Alysa Lui of the United States reacts to her scores after competing during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Alysa Lui of the United States prepares to compete during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Alysa Lui of the United States competes during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Alysa Lui of the United States reacts to her scores with her team after competing during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
A two-year break, a new outlook and a world title later, it's all new again.
“This time just feels so completely different. I know who I am as a person now,” Liu said after a routine Friday at the Milan Cortina Games which ensured the U.S. stayed at the top of the team event standings on the opening day.
“I have ideas and concepts that I want to share with the world, so I’m happy to be here, versus last time I was kind of like, ‘Let’s get this over with’. Now I want be here and I don’t want this to end.”
Liu retired suddenly after placing sixth at the 2022 Olympics and it took two years before she rediscovered a love for skating. In 2025, she became the first U.S. woman to win the world title in 19 years.
Friday's skate in the short program wasn't quite at that level and Liu grimaced at one wobbly landing as she placed second behind three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan. Still, it kept the U.S. team in the lead with three of eight programs completed.
Liu draws strength from her American teammates — “that energy is what I crave” — and came up with the nickname “Blade Angels” for herself and the other two U.S. women's skaters, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito, a mashup of “Blades of Glory” and “Charlie's Angels."
Nerves? No chance.
“I don’t know what’s up with me," she said. "They’re going to actually have to dissect my brain when I’m dead and figure me out.”
After the 2022 Olympics were overshadowed by a failed doping test for 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva, the rules were changed.
Now skaters must be at least 17 to compete in top-level international events, a measure aimed at ensuring physical and mental health.
Of the nine skaters, all girls, in 2022 who would have been too young to compete under the new rules, Liu is the only one to repeat as an Olympian in 2026.
“Sixteen-year-old me would have loved if I couldn’t go to the Olympics, so I wouldn’t have minded it,” Liu said.
“I think to be on the big stage and in front of so many people, you have to be an adult. It’s so hard on a kid. That comes from experience.”
AP Winter Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Alysa Lui of the United States reacts to her scores after competing during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Alysa Lui of the United States prepares to compete during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Alysa Lui of the United States competes during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Alysa Lui of the United States reacts to her scores with her team after competing during the figure skating women's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
KENNEBUNK, Maine (AP) — It just wouldn't feel like the Super Bowl for them if they weren't all there. And this might be the last time they all do it.
That's what three old friends were coming to grips with just before this year's Super Bowl. The trio of octogenarians are the only fans left in the exclusive “never missed a Super Bowl” club.
Don Crisman of Maine, Gregory Eaton of Michigan and Tom Henschel of Florida were back for another big game this year. But two of them are grappling with the fact that advancing years and decreasing mobility mean this is probably the last time.
This year's game pits the Seattle Seahawks against the New England Patriots at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday. Crisman, a Patriots fan since the franchise started, was excited to see his team in the game for a record-setting 12th time.
“This will definitely be the final one,” said Crisman, who made the trip with his daughter, Susan Metevier. “We made it to 60.”
Crisman, who first met Henschel at the 1983 Super Bowl, turns 90 this year. Meanwhile, Henschel, 84, has been slowed by a stroke. Both said this is the last time they'll make the increasingly expensive trip to the game, although members of the group have said that before. For his part, Eaton, 86, plans to keep going as long as he’s still physically able.
Eaton, who runs a ground transportation company in Detroit, is the only member of the group not retired. And he’d still like to finally see his beloved Detroit Lions make it to a Super Bowl.
Even so, all three said they’ve scaled back the time they dedicate each year to the trip. Crisman used to spend a week in the host city, soaking in the pomp and pageantry. These days, it's just about the game, not the hype.
“We don't go for a week anymore, we go for three or four days,” Crisman said.
Eaton, too, admits the price and hype of the big game have gotten to be a lot.
“I think all of them are big, they're all fun. It's just gotten so commercial. It's a $10,000 trip now,” he said.
Henschel said this year's Super Bowl would be the most challenging for him because of his stroke, but he was excited to see Eaton and Crisman one more time.
Eaton met Crisman and Henschel in the mid-2010s after years of attending the Super Bowl separately. And Henschel and Crisman have a long-running rivalry: Their respective favorite teams — the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots — are AFC rivals.
The fans have attended every game since the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, as the first two Super Bowls were known at the time, in 1967. They have sometimes sat together in the past, but logistics make it impossible some years.
But this year it was just about being able to go to the game at all, Henschel said.
“I don’t talk or walk good,” he said.
The club of people who have never missed a Super Bowl once included other fans, executives, media members and even groundskeepers, but as time has passed, the group has shrunk. Photographer John Biever, who has shot every Super Bowl, also plans to let his streak end at 60.
The three fans spin tales of past games that often focus less on the action on the field than on the different world where old Super Bowls took place. Henschel scored a $12 ticket for the 1969 Super Bowl the day of the game. Crisman endured a 24-hour train ride to Miami for the 1968 Super Bowl. Eaton, who is Black, remembers the many years before Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to win a Super Bowl in 1988.
Metevier, Crisman's daughter, was born the year of the first Super Bowl and grew up with her dad's streak as a fixture in her life. She's looking forward to going to one last game with him.
“It's kind of bittersweet. It's about the memories,” Metevier said. “It's not just about the football, it's something more.”
Crisman's son, Don Crisman Jr., said he's on board with his dad making the trip for as long as he's still able, too.
“You know, he's a little long in the tooth, but the way I put it, if it was me and I was mobile and I could go, I would damn sure go,” he said.
Don Crisman wears his shirt from Super Bowl 56 in 2022, when the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Kennebunk, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Don Crisman holds a copy of the official program for Super Bowl 50, which featured a story on a small group of fans, including Crisman, who had attended every championship game, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Kennebunk, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Don Crisman holds a Super Bowl 38 souvenir hat signed by Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Kennebunk, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Don Crisman, one of only three remaining members of the "Never Miss a Super Bowl Club" to attend every championship game since 1967, models a souvenir hat from the first game, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Kennebunk, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
FILE — Members of the Never Miss a Super Bowl Club, from the left, Tom Henschel, Gregory Eaton, and Don Crisman pose for a group photograph during a welcome luncheon, in Atlanta, Feb. 1, 2019. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
