American figure skater Alyssa Liu is America’s last hope at winning a gold medal in an individual figure skating event at the Milan Cortina Olympics. Liu has become a fan favorite for the U.S. this year, playing a key role in helping her country win gold in the team event after her dramatic comeback story. She only just returned to the world stage after a brief retirement following her performance at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. But there was a moment in her story that wasn’t all feel-good sports joy. There was a moment where she had to face the fear of geopolitical espionage. CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COMJust prior to her appearance in the 2022 Beijing games, she and her father were the targets of a spying operation by the Chinese government.Her father, Arthur, fled China as a refugee decades earlier. But his past followed him, as his past involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests made him and his daughter the targets of spies in 2022. Liu called the experience “a little bit freaky and exciting.””You know what I mean? It’s so… unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that’s crazy,” Liu previously told Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.ILIA MALININ HINTS AT INTENSE OLYMPIC PRESSURE DAYS AFTER UNEXPECTED RESULT”Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like In a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real like I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from like everything my dad did back in his activist days.”One of the five men who were charged Wednesday with spying on Chinese dissidents living in the U.S., Matthew Ziburis, allegedly contacted Arthur in November 2021, impersonating a USOPC official and asking for his and Liu’s passport numbers, The Associated Press reported at the time. Ziburis allegedly traveled to California’s Bay Area, where the Liu family lived, to surveil them and try to coax private information from the family that he could then supply to the Chinese government.Her father told The Associated Press at the time, “They are probably just trying to intimidate us, to… in a way threaten us not to say anything, to cause trouble to them and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China… I had concerns about her safety. The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI came to Liu’s aid. She first spoke with the FBI agent who would protect her family at length at a local Japanese restaurant.”I went like to eat dinner with her a couple times I mostly talk, because like, I’m also like, really interested in what she does, like guys like, that’s so cool to me like, I don’t know, just like meeting with an FBI agent like that’s crazy work,” she said. “You know, and I mean, like not many people can do that. So I, you know, I have so many questions and like I’ve met with, like a psychologis
US Olympian Alysa Liu was once targeted by Chinese spies – here’s what she has to say about it
