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After competing in the 2022 Beijing Olympics and winning a bronze medal at the World Championships that winter, 16-year-old Alysa Liu retired from ice skating, worn out from the sport.

Turns out it was an extended break instead.

Now 19, Liu capped her return to skating at the World Championships in Boston, winning the women’s singles figure skating title late Friday. Her dazzling free-skate routine to Boston native Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” left a delighted crowd standing and cheering, and left Liu — appropriately wearing a shimmering gold dress — with expressions that ranged from joy to disbelief.

She became the first American woman to stand atop the podium at the event since Kimmie Meissner in 2006.

“I’m not going to lie, this is an insane story,” Liu said on NBC Sports. “I don’t know how I came back to be world champion.”

Liu cleanly landed seven triple jumps and received positive execution scores on all 12 of her technical elements. The eighth seed entering the competition, Liu’s free skate score of 148.39 crushed her season’s best mark by almost 17 points.

“This means so much to me,” said Liu, from Oakland, Calif. “Everything that I have been through — my time away and all that. This time around I’m so happy.”

She won the national championship at age 13 and was the next shining hope for U.S. women’s figure skating. Gone were the days of heaps of medals won by the likes of Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski, Michelle Kwan and Sarah Hughes, and when Liu retired from burnout, the hope dimmed.

Now, she could lead an American team into the Olympics next winter in Italy with a chance of the first gold medal by an American woman since Hughes achieved the feat in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Isabeau Levito, who skates out of New Jersey, and Amber Glenn of Dallas finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Levito won the silver medal at the 2024 worlds, and Glenn is the two-time reigning U.S. champion.

Finishing with the silver and bronze medals, respectively, were Kaori Sakamoto and Mone Chiba, both from Japan.

–Field Level Media