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By Tyler Erzberger
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Alysa Liu won the women's individual figure skating gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games, and she's also the reigning world champion in the discipline.
While she will have to wait four years to defend her gold in the French Alps at the 2030 Olympics, Liu was slated to participate in the World Championships later this month in Prague to see if she could go back-to-back as champion.
On Saturday, though, thoughts of her defending the women's figure skating world championship ended when she officially dropped out of the event in Czechia.
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In recent interviews, Liu seemed optimistic about competing, saying that she wanted to but would have to see if she could make it work.
Both individual gold medalists in Milan, Liu and Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov, have now withdrawn from the World Championships.
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While Shaidorov dropped almost immediately after his shocking gold medal win in Italy, it took a few weeks after the Olympics for Liu to decide to sit out defending her crown.
Although fans are theorizing about why she can't compete at Worlds, most cite a need to rest after a hectic Olympics in which she won two golds. But figure skating journalist Jackie Wong weighed in on the possible real reason.
"When they were discussing this the night Alysa Liu won the Olympics," he wrote on social media. "I don't think they even imagined the swell of attention (or the 7 million Instagram followers) - these next few months could set her up for a long time financially as well, so there are implications there."
Liu has been everywhere on television and the internet since returning home from the Olympics two weeks ago. Although she got a bit of time off to catch up on sleep and hang out with friends, since then, she's been on every magazine cover and talk show in the United States.
Other reports state that the media tour cut into the preparation time needed to compete at the level required for the World Championships.
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