Inside US Olympian Alysa Liu's battle with Chinese spies as she triumphs to win historic gold medal
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Jamie Squire/Getty
The family of a US Olympic gold medallist was targeted by Chinese spies.
Alysa Liu, 20, took the gold medal in the figure skating at the Winter Olympics, racing up an astonishing score of 150.20 in her free skate.
This got her a final score of 226.79, enabling her to beat Kaori Sakamoto from Japan, who had previously beat Alysa at the world title in 2025.
Alysa's victory made history for the US Olympic team, as she is the first US Olympic champion in women's figure skating in more than 20 years, when Sarah Hughes claimed victory in 2002.
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She is also the first medallist from Team USA since Sasha Cohen in 2006.
Speaking after her victory, she said: "My family is out there, my friends are out there. I had to put on a show for them.
"When I see other people smiling, because I see them in the audience, I have to smile, too. I have no poker face."
Her family, including her father Arthur, settled in the Bay Area in California after growing up in Sichuan Province in China, before fleeing the country when he was 25 years old.
And it was her father's past in China which reportedly drew unwanted attention onto the family when Alysa was set to compete at the Beijing Olympics.
Only a few months before the competition, her father was targeted by Chinese government spies.
Alysa described the experience to Fox News as 'a little bit freaky and exciting.'
She added: "You know what I mean? It's so… unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that's crazy."
But why was he targeted?
Before leaving China, Arthur had been involved in a number of pro-democracy movements in the country.
This reportedly included involvement in the infamous Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and it was his involvement in political activism which eventually forced him to leave the country and settle in California.
Reporting at the time found that five men were charged with spying on Chinese dissidents living in the US, and one of them allegedly contacted Arthur in 2021.
They posed as a US Olympic official, and asked Arthur for information about his passport.
Arthur previously spoke about how he had believed this was an attempt to intimidate him and stop him from speaking out about human rights, and admitted he was worried for his daughter's safety.
Alysa missed out on a medal in Beijing, and temporarily quit figure skating as a result.
But now she has come back, and claimed the gold.