Two weeks of ferocious competition in Olympic figure skating concluded Thursday in Milano Cortina. Team USA went into the Olympics as gold medal contenders in four of the five events.
Figure skating opened with the team event, a battle between the ten best countries in figure skating. The battle for gold was truly only between two nations, the U.S. and Japan, while Italy, Georgia and Canada fought for bronze.
Following the qualification rounds, the U.S. held the lead with victories in the rhythm dance by Madison Chock and Evan Bates, a fifth-place finish in the pairs short program from Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea and a second-place finish in the women’s short program from Alysa Liu. A shocking upset came in the men’s short program when Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama bested America’s Ilia Malinin with a massive 108.67 points.
Heading into the pairs free skate, the U.S. held a five-point lead. The Japanese duo of Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara were all but guaranteed to win in the pairs skate, so Americans Kam and O’Shea had to find an extra point to keep the cushion before the women’s free skate.
Two perfect programs from Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Georgia’s Anastasiia Gubanova put Amber Glenn in third place in the women’s free skate and tie the U.S. and Japan at 59 points heading into the men’s free skate.
Malinin gave Japan’s Shun Sato a chance when he fell out of his quadruple Lutz, which controversially received no deduction. Sato followed it up with his best free skate ever, but finished six points short of Malinin, despite his perfect skate.
Team USA took the first gold in figure skating in Milan; Japan fell one point short to take silver and host country Italy took the bronze.
The first individual event was the ice dance. The married American duo Chock and Bates were the overwhelming favorites, having only lost in four events following their fourth-place finish in the 2022 Olympics.
Their closest competitors were the French team, Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, who shocked many with how good they were despite being a year-old team. They delivered a stunning personal best rhythm dance to Madonna’s “Vogue,” scoring a massive 90.18 points.
Chock and Bates put on a show of their own. Their Lenny Kravitz medley accompanied their gorgeous dance at the highest technical levels. However, a review by the judges on their pattern step downgraded the skill from level four to level three.
The Americans bounced back in the free dance with a program that Chock considered their best. It looked pretty good for Team USA after the French performance, with visible mistakes by Cizeron on their synchronized twizzles and the serpentine step sequence. They were still given a personal best score to take gold by over a point.
Controversy loomed quickly when the results showed that the French judge graded the French team eight points higher than the Americans. The shocked French duo took gold, Chock and Bates took their first Olympic medal with a bittersweet silver and an emphatic Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier from Canada snagged bronze.
The men’s skate seemed pretty set in stone for Team USA as well. Malinin had not lost a competition since November 2023, but it was Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov who stunned the world with his triple axel-quadruple salchow combination.
From fifth place after the short program, Shaidorov put down a personal best free skate to shoot him into the lead. All the contenders ahead of him struggled on their skate, and his lead held up to Malinin’s skate.
Malinin needed a score over 50 points less than his personal best, but he was unable to get close as he bailed on his quadruple axel and fell twice. He fell off the podium down to eighth place, with Japan’s Kagiyama and Sato taking silver and bronze.
In the pairs skate, the Japanese duo Miura and Kihara struggled on their lift in the short program, and it looked like they were going to lose. The Japanese team needed to make up a seven-point deficit against the German team in the free skate.
The duo made it up and then some, with a world record free skate score of 158.13. They gave Japan its first ever Olympic gold in the pairs event. Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava gave Georgia its first-ever winter Olympic medal and Germany’s Fabienne Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin took bronze.
The competition in the women’s skate was strictly a fight between the U.S. and Japan. The gold medal hopeful for the U.S. was Glenn, who bailed out of her triple loop in the short program and scored zero points for the invalid element, landing in 13th by the end of the short.
After the short, it was Japan’s Ami Nakai with the lead as one of two women to land a triple axel. Japan’s Sakamoto and the U.S.’s Liu rounded out the rest of the top three.
Despite being out of medal contention, Glenn had a redemption in the free skate. She had a nearly clean program and flew all the way up to fifth place by the end.
That meant it was Liu who had to be the one to bring home the United States’ first Olympic medal in women’s skating since 2006. Liu showed the world that she wasn’t walking away with just any medal, but gold.
Liu put down a personal best total score, soaring into first place and giving Team USA their second figure skating gold of the Olympics. Japan rounded out the podium with Sakamoto taking silver and Nakai taking bronze.
Team USA fell short of expectations in Milan, but still walked away with two gold medals and a silver.
