The figure skating world, still reeling from Ilia Malinin’s shocking finish, now turns its attention to the pairs medal.
Team USA’s Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea arrive with both momentum and bruises. They helped drag the United States to team gold, then promptly went back to doing the pairs thing where one person becomes a human catapult and everyone pretends that is normal. Americans Emily Chan and Spencer Akira Howe will also be making their Olympics debut.
How to watch pairs figure skating at the Winter Olympics
- Venue: Milano Ice Skating Arena — Assago, Italy
- Date: Feb. 15-16
- TV: NBC, USA Network
- Streaming: Peacock, NBCOlympics.com
Be sure to check out The Athletic’s Olympic schedule interactive page and Games Briefing, a daily Olympics newsletter.
In figure skating, scoring is detailed enough to look scientific and subjective enough to start arguments. After the ice dance dispute, the judges won’t be background noise. They’ll be part of the story.
The International Judging System cleaned up the old backroom fog, but it didn’t eliminate the part fans argue about most: interpretation. Figure skating controversy isn’t a glitch. It’s the tax for scoring both physics and poetry.
After a heartbreaking second place for Team USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates in ice dancing and a flare-up involving France, “technical review” has started to sound less like procedure and more like a threat. Not because the next medal is suspect, but because trust is now part of the atmosphere.
Next up is a discipline where U.S. history is full of near-misses: America has never won Olympic pairs gold, and its last pairs medal came in 1988. Just last month, the two-time reigning U.S. champions, Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, were declared ineligible for the Olympics because Efimova is not a naturalized citizen.
Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, the defending world champions, are the gold-medal favorites. They topped the standings in both the pairs short and free skate portions of the team event. Kam and O’Shea finished in fifth and fourth, respectively, and earned a personal-best score in the free skate.
Pairs figure skating events and live start times
All times below are ET. The venue feed does not include commentary.
Sunday, Feb. 15
- Pairs short program, Part 1: 1:30 p.m. (USA), 1:45 p.m. (Peacock — venue feed)
- Pairs short program, Part 2: 3 p.m. (NBC)
NBC’s Sunday night episode of “Primetime in Milan” will show highlights of the pairs short program at 9:20 and 10:20 p.m. The event will also re-air on USA at 1:45 a.m. Monday.
Monday, Feb. 16
- Pairs free skate, Part 1: 1:45 p.m. (USA), 2 p.m. (Peacock — venue feed)
- Pairs free skate, Part 2: 3:55 p.m. (NBC)
NBC’s Monday night episode of “Primetime in Milan” will show highlights of the pairs free skate at 8:30 and 9:45 p.m. The event will also re-air on USA at 2 a.m. Tuesday.
