Brett Cooper

She did an interview that now has gone viral.

And she said, you know, I'm not going to be starving myself.

I'm going to be setting my own practice times.

I want to be doing the music that I want to dance to.

I want to do this my own way.

I'm not going to try to fit into these conventional ice skating molds anymore.

I'm just going to be Alyssa.

You can love it or you can hate it, but I want to skate just because I love it.

And apparently that was the winning strategy.

What people have loved even more than her just bringing home a gold medal is her radiant joy that she was showing throughout this entire Olympic Games.

She came back onto the ice now, four years later, as a completely different skater, a completely different person, and that was infectious.

She has become so well-loved, which is why people are now playing politics and they are trying to fight over her.

We will get to that, but for now, just watch her free skate routine from the finals.

It was so awesome.

It was so much fun.

It was incredible.

And the best part was, to me at least, like not only was she having so much fun, but she finished that looking so proud and so confident.

Like she knew that she crushed it.

And people loved her even more when she ran right up to the cameras after that routine and she said this.

That's what I'm fucking talking about!