Figure skater Alysa Liu has already gotten a replacement gold medal just days after accidentally breaking hers at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
“[It’s] a new one,” Liu, 20, revealed during a Tuesday, February 10, interview with Overtime. “I was just jumping up and down, as one does to celebrate, and it just dropped. It just literally fell off the ribbon.”
Liu was among the Team USA figure skaters — Amber Glenn, Ilia Malinin, Ellie Kam, Danny O’Shea, Madison Chock and Evan Bates — who won gold in the team event earlier in February. They were joined by Team Japan and Team Italy on the podium, who finished in second and third place, respectively.
“[My medal] got really scratched up, very dented. Well, not very dented but pretty dented,” Liu acknowledged on Tuesday. “I actually liked it when it was off the ribbon, but that’s not allowed. That would be a problem for today if I couldn’t wear it.”
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While Liu was given a replacement gold, she also wasn’t able to keep the broken trophy.
“I had to give it in. I was, like, ‘Can’t you just fix this one? I’m attached,’” she quipped to the outlet. “But, it’s OK. I’m detached [now] — just like it was.”
Hours after the Sunday, February 8, medal ceremony, Liu revealed that her trophy was already broken.
“My medal don’t need the ribbon,” she wrote via Instagram. “Proud of the team.”
Liu still has another chance to walk away with another medal at the Milano Cortina Olympics during the women’s singles individual figure skating competition beginning Tuesday, February 17.
Liu previously competed at the 2022 Olympics when she was just 16 before retiring that same year. She made her triumphant comeback to the ice in 2024 ahead of Olympics qualifiers.
“It was good for me to take time off from skating,” she said in a statement at the time. “I am beyond excited to begin skating again with my newly found perspective.”
Liu has since been candid about what her gold medal moment has meant since her return to the sport.
“I mean, it’s really the journey that I think is the coolest. I don’t want this to overshadow my story,” she told NBC earlier this week. “It was only right [to come back]. I had to do it in the moment, like, two years ago. I went on that ski trip, and I missed the adrenaline rush. I was, like, ‘I need to feel that again,’ and so, that has brought me here. What I’ve experienced these past two years has been nothing short of just incredible.”
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Liu also isn’t the only Team USA athlete dealing with a faulty gold medal at the 2026 Games.
“So, there’s the medal, and there’s the ribbon,” Breezy Johnson, who won gold in women’s downhill alpine skiing, said in a Sunday press conference. “And here’s the little piece that is supposed to go into the ribbon to hold the medal. And yeah, it came apart.”
Representatives for the Olympics have since looked into the cause of the broken trophies.
“We are aware of the situation. We have seen the images,” Andrea Francisi, the Chief Games Operations Officer, said in a Monday, February 9, statement. “Obviously, we are trying to understand in detail if there is a problem. We are paying maximum attention to this matter, as the medal is the dream of the athletes, so we want that obviously in the moment they are given it that everything is absolutely perfect, because we really consider it to be the most important moment. We are working on it.”
