In Her Big Olympic Moment, Alysa Liu Celebrated Her Freedom by Gia Kourlas

The Unstoppable Alysa Liu by Jessica Valenti

I have only the tiniest sliver of interest when it comes to the Olympics, and yet I am completely enamored with the performance and spirit of Alysa Liu. Writing for The New York Times, Gia Kourlas captures precisely what was special about Liu’s extraordinary free skate that locked up the gold medal. When Kourlas writes “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the extreme statement rings true. Coming at Liu’s achievement from a related but slightly different angle, Jessica Valenti sees the joyful freedom and self-assured calm of the skater as a fierce statement in and of itself. In a dark time full of societal backsliding, Liu is a striking reminder of the importance in staying out of the way of women who are making their own determined choices. Valenti wrote her piece for her own newsletter, Abortion, Every Day.

The Best and Worst of USA Hockey’s Brotherhood, All at Once by Katie Baker

Writing for the The Ringer, Katie Baker considers the dual accomplishments of women’s and men’s USA hockey teams at the Olympics, including the camaraderie they showed for one another throughout the games. She also writes about how that camaraderie was demolished when the men’s team boorishly reacted to a cheap, chauvinistic joke by the repugnant human being currently occupying the White House. Baker is extremely effective in conveying exactly why the male players’ behavior was so detestable. Importantly, she also puts plenty of focus on the laudatory accomplishments of the women’s team.