Her performance proved that a 20-year-old woman can be strong, feathering, free, warm to her competitors, and salty all at the same time. Cloaked in a dress that looked like it was made of gold coins, and that seemed to give her a jauntiness on the ice, Liu completed a strenuous seven triple jumps. Her effort was all the more extraordinary given that she had retired in 2022 at the age of 16 because she didn’t want to become a sulky, overtrained arthritic with the emotional disposition of burnt toast. “The last time I was skating it was so rough,” she said in a press conference after her gold-medal win, “I genuinely cannot even begin to start on it.”