The breakout star of the 2026 Winter Olympics Alysia Liu is from the East Bay and trained at the Oakland Ice Center, so Oakland is planning a “community-wide celebration” that will act as Alysia Liu’s gold medal victory parade.
With the exception of maybe now-gloriously toothless hockey star Jack Hughes, the biggest US breakout star to emerge from this year’ Winter Olympics was gold medal-winning East Bay figure skating phenom Alysia Liu. Liu is technically from Richmond, but the now-20-year-old figure skater trained at the Oakland Ice Center, where she honed her skills to become the first US woman in 24 years to win the gold medal in women’s singles skating, in the routine seen below. So Oakland can definitely lay claim to Alysa Liu being one of its own.
Now KRON4 reports that the City of Oakland is planning a series of celebrations for Alysa Liu that will be not unlike a championship victory parade. The trouble is, none of these celebrations are announced, and we do not yet have an idea what any of them will be.
All we have is the Instagram post above from the official account of the City of Oakland. “The City of Oakland is planning a community-wide celebration to honor Olympic gold medalist and Oakland's hometown hero Alysa Liu!” according to the Tuesday post. “Alysa represents the heart, grit, resilience, and joy of Oakland. Her achievement has filled our city with pride, and we are coordinating with her team now to finalize a date so the community can celebrate her together. Stay tuned for details coming soon.”
The scarcity of detail there makes sense. Liu just got back to the Bay Area late Monday night and is probably still sleeping off the jet lag of flying back from Italy. So it is reasonable that it would be another day or two until we have specific and concrete plans for her public gold medal celebrations.
But there have already been celebrations at the Oakland Ice Center, as seen above, where the watch party for Liu’s gold medal-winning performance drew an audience of more than 100.
Liu joined Fremont’s Kristi Yamaguchi (1992) and San Jose’s Peggy Fleming (1968) as US women who’ve won gold in figure skating. Liu also helped Team USA win gold in the team category.
Related: Richmond’s Own Alysa Liu Wins Figure Skating Gold, Bay Area Loses Its Mind [Joe]
Image: MILAN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 19: Gold medalist Alysa Liu of Team United States, silver medalist Kaori Sakamoto of Team Japan and bronze medalist Ami Nakai of Team Japan celebrate on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Women's Single Skating on day thirteen of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Milano Ice Skating Arena on February 19, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
