Iga and Coco give Alysa Liu her flowers
Leaving a mark.
Alysa Liu was getting her shoutouts during Media Day at the BNP Paribas Open, with Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff praising the 20-year-old Oakland gal for her inspiring outlook on sport and competition.
I asked the two if they had followed the Olympics and whether anything resonated with them.
"I think her whole story was super inspiring," Coco said, "and I think I could highly relate as someone who was very young put into a sport. I wouldn't say I have faced burnout, but there are times you're mentally just tired of it and you feel like you're doing stuff and you don't know why. So I definitely could relate to her whole story.
"I was happy to see her be that voice saying the unsaid things that athletes think but are maybe scared to say."
In case you've been hiding under a rock, Liu is the newly-crowned Olympic figure skating champion who won back-to-back U.S. Nationals at age 13 and 14, then retired at 16 after the 2022 Beijing Olympics. She returned to the sport vowing to do it all on her own quirked-up terms, and....voila.
Iga won her first Grand Slam as a teenager, so she too knows a thing or two about the pressure that comes from early success.
"I saw Liu winning when actually she had some troubles, like before she was burned out and she had to stop," Iga said. "Now she seems like everything she does she does to have fun and to really show her amazing skills in a way that makes her happy. Like, it looks like that. I haven't spoken to her, so I'm not sure. But it's really inspiring.
"So I think this really will... I will remember it for a long time."
Coco also had nothing but respect and admiration for Eileen Gu. She's never met the Chinese-American Stanford student, but they've interacted on Instagram.
Courtney Nguyen
previously: i too am enamored by alysa liu and eileen gu
"She speaks so well," Coco said. "Obviously she's super smart. I think she's one of those people you don't want your parents to find out about because she's so accomplished, and they're, like, 'What are you doing?'
"I could be Grand Slam winner and my mom is, like, 'She graduated Stanford and did all this stuff.'"
Girl, if you think Eileen Gu has destroyed YOUR life, just imagine what happens when Eileen Gu is discovered by YOUR ASIAN PARENTS.
