Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea falter in the free skate but underscore a bright future for US pairs
MILAN — Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea did not have the kind of pairs free skate they envisioned at the Olympics.
At least the Americans have that team gold medal to console them.
No doubt exhausted by performing for the fourth time at the Winter Games, the U.S. team struggled after a strong short program that had put them in seventh place, bringing their Olympic debut to a close with a ninth-place finish in the pairs event on Monday night.
Their teammates, Emily Chan and Spencer Howe, finished two spots better in seventh.
“We definitely did leave it all out there, just not in the way that I had thought that it was going to go,” Kam said. “But I’m still so proud of everything that we’ve done here. I feel like all the work that we put in at home has carried through to this competition.”
It was an encouraging couple of weeks for the American pairs contingent, which didn't even have two of its top three pairs in Milan because of citizenship issues. The Finnish-born Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, the reigning U.S. champion pair, had hoped until the last minute that she would get her passport, but the government failed to come through for her.
Katie McBeath and Russian-born Daniil Parkman also were unable to compete in Milan because he is not yet a U.S. citizen.
But the other two pairs delivered: Kam and O'Shea put together two strong skates in the team event to help the Americans defend their gold medal, while Chan and Howe briefly spent time in the leader's chair Monday night after a strong free skate.
“I love skating, and skating on Olympic ice is literally a dream coming true,” said O’Shea, a Gurnee native and St. Viator High School graduate. “This whole time that we’ve been here has been an amazing experience. It’s definitely one where we’re feeling a little tired by the end of it. But we’re very proud of the whole body of work that we put out across the time that we’ve been here.”
The U.S. has been good and at times dominant in figure skating's other three disciplines.
In the men's event, Nathan Chen and Evan Lysacek have given the Americans gold medals at two of the past five Winter Games, and Ilia Malinin is the two-time reigning world champ. In the women's event, Alysa Liu is the current world champ. In ice dance, Madison Chock and Evan Bates have won three straight world titles and just won the Olympic silver medal.
Yet for some reason, the Americans have struggled for generations in pairs.
They haven't had an Olympic medalist since Jill Watson and Peter Oppegard at the 1988 Calgary Games, and that was bronze. Kitty and Peter Carruthers won silver four years earlier at Sarajevo, but the U.S. still has never won gold.
But there are signs that the U.S. is on the rise.
Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier won the world title in 2022, the first for an American team since Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1979. That came after their seventh-place finish at the Beijing Games, the best for the U.S. since 2006 in Turin.
It's unclear how much longer O'Shea plans to compete after turning 35 last week, but Kam turned 21 in December and is still relatively new to pairs. Then there is the 26-year-old Efimova and 28-year-old Mitrofanov, who could be medal contenders by 2030.
The pair have been on an upward trajectory since getting together three years ago, and they would have been the top U.S. team had her American citizenship come through. They are seventh among all world pairs teams when ranked by their best this season.
“There are so many great teams in the U.S. that have surfaced,” Howe said. “We hope to continue to be part of that group.”