Last American woman to win gold figure skating medal: How Alysa Liu ended USA's 20-year Olympics drought

Last American woman to win gold figure skating medal: How Alysa Liu ended USA's 20-year Olympics drought originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .

The United States has a long history of being competitive in women's Olympic figure skating, but has been in a medal drought for the event.  Team USA was searching for its first medal in women's single figure skating since 2006. Alysa Liu entered the 2026 Olympics looking to be the first American figure skater to win a medal in 20 years.

She put up 76.59 points in the short program portion of the event, which was good enough for third place.  Liu put up an impressive free skate program and tallied 77.74 points. She was in first place until the final skater, Ami Nakai from Japan. While it looked like Nakai was going to take the gold, it was Liu who earned the top spot and gold medal. Liu had a 150.20 free skating score for a total of 226.79.

She edged out Kaori Sakamoto, who took the silver with 224.90 points, and Nakai ended up finishing in third for the bronze medal with 219.16 points.  She became the first American figure skater to earn a medal in women's singles competition since 2006, and the first gold medal winner since 2002.  Here is more on how Liu ended the USA's medal drought in women's figure skating.

MORE 2026 OLYMPICS: Live medal tracker | Viewer's guide | Day-by-day schedule Last American woman to win figure skating medal at Olympics The last American woman to win a singles figure skating medal at the Olympics before Liu ended the drought was Sasha Cohen.

She won the silver medal at the 2006 Olympics, and over the last 20 years, no American woman has registered any medal in the singles figure skating event.  The singles figure skating event in 2006 had a similar format to the one it has today.

It consisted of the short program and the free skate, with the scores from each event combined for the final standings.  Cohen crushed the short program, scoring 66.73 in the total segment. She had a .03 point lead on Russia's Irina Slutskaya and a .71 lead over Japan's Shizuka Arakawa. Cohen didn't do quite as well in the free skate, finishing with a 116.3.

This was good enough for second place, and she had a two-point lead over Slutskaya in third. The problem is that Arakawa posted a 125.32 and dominated the event.  Arakawa finished with a total score of 191.34 for the gold medal, while Cohen came in second with a 183.36.   MORE:  What's the story behind Alysa Liu's teeth piercings?

Last American woman to win figure skating gold medal at Olympics Before Liu took the 2026 gold medal for women's singles figure skating, the last American to accomplish the feat pulled it off 24 years prior in 2002.  The Americans represented well in 2002. Michelle Kwan was in second after the short program, while Sarah Hughes was in fourth. Hughes then had an interesting scenario unfold.

Her free skate score ended up tying her with Irina Slutskaya on the overall leaderboard. This forced the final standings to go into a tiebreaker. It is decided by the free skate score.