Here Is Why Everyone Is Talking About Alysa Liu's Hair at the Olympics

American figure skater Alysa Liu is making headlines for her appearance in the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, but it isn't for the reason you may think.

Alysa is on the U.S. Women's figure skating team, but it's her hairstyle that everyone is talking about. She is expected to bring home a gold medal for Team USA, per People, so why is everyone talking about her hair? Here is what we found out.

Alysa has naturally dark hair, and she added bleached stripes to her hair about three years ago. The press asked her about her famous hairdo at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January of 2026, and she shared why she bleached her hair. She also said, "It'll be the same," about her hairstyle at the Olympics.

The figure skater told NBC New York that she dyes her hair every year.

"No, it'll be the same," she said of her hairstyle. "So, I do this every year. I add a stripe, so it's going to be like this for a year. Then next year wintertime, like end of December, I do another ring."

She added that she has been doing the stripes in her hair for three years. "So this one I did at the end of 2023, then did another one in 2024 and 2025."

"I bleached it, but I wanted it to be lighter," she added. "Because I usually do it like a gingery color, but I was like, 'I want something different. I want it light.' And so I made it lighter, and I realized the second round of bleach, it's like, it was really hard to get it lighter because my hair is so dark."

She added that she needed salon-grade products, so she got help from a professional in Missouri.

"I went to a salon in St. Louis," she recalled, and she was asked if she remembered the name of the hairstylist who did her golden halos, which she remembered. "Kelsey. Of course, I remember her name. Yeah, her name is Kelsey, and she helped bleach this again. My hair is still good, and it feels really healthy. She toned it, too. She toned it perfectly. This is exactly what I wanted."

Alysa made history last March when she became the first American woman to win the World Figure Skating Championships in nearly 20 years, and she was just 19 at the time. The win came after she had taken a three-year break following her competing in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Alysa finished in 6th place, and she finished in third place at the 2022 World Figure Skating Championships before announcing her return in 2024.

Alysa is the daughter of Arthur Liu, a Chinese immigrant who came to the United States and later decided to become a parent on his own with the help of a surrogate mother back in 2005.