Winter Olympics 2022 : Figure skating Recap : Why the pair event was everything the sport needed



With a very a tight competition, Chinese skaters Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, silver medalists four years ago at the Pyeongchang Games, were crowned Olympic champions in pairs on last Saturday. In the lead after the short program, they beat, with their total of 239.88 points, two Russian couples, Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, 2nd (239.25 pts), and Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, 3rd (237.71 pts). An incredibly exciting event that conclude in a very positive note the Olympics.
 


Winter Olympics 2022. Pair Figure skating event. (c) Sarah Barreiros.
As said Adam Rippon, American figure skater, team event Bronze medalist of PyeongChang, on twitter last Saturday : "The Pairs event was the most perfect way to end this Olympics for figure skating". Indeed. The pair figure skating event offered a very tight and excited competition.

Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, silver medalist of last Olympics had an incredibly long carreer and experience as a team coming into Beijing Olympics Games. They in fact, were among the big hopes for a gold medal for China and so became Olympic pairs champions on Saturday. In the lead at the end of the short program, the double world champions skated last. They are the only ones to perform a quadruple twist, as they promised and they di dit, perfectly with Goe+. And that twist was game changing considering how hard it was technically and skating speaking to know who would be Olympic champion ! Just before them, the Russians Evguenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, often disappointing in major events, had skated the program of their lives and obtained their best score (239.25 pts). Ahead of the technical score, the Chinese finally win with 239.88 pts, four years after having to settle for silver for 0.43 pts. As the reflect of their consistancy since 2018, where the won the Junior Worl Championships and the Junior Grands Prix Final, the reigning world and European champions Anastasia Mishina and Alexandr Galliamov, as well performed two pefect programs and rank third with 237.71 pts. The différence here were made by the components score, as this team is slightly younger than the already experienced in time team ahead of them.

Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitry Kozlovsky, skated to “Malaguena” by Ernesto Lecuona. Fourth after the short, the 2020 European Champion could believe that they would make a play for the medals. Boikova and Kozlovsky skated their usual fearless performance, full off beautiful and technically hard transitions between elements. As flexible she is, lot of there lift are made with extension and split. They hit a triple twist arm up, and a confidently landed throw triple flip. Boikova had a step-out on the landing of the throw triple loop. Their free skate wasn’t enough to pull them up to the top three, but Boikova and Kozlovsky are already medal favorites for the futur Olympics.


Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier scored a 138.45 in the free skate at the 2022 Winter Olympics to jump to the top of the leaderboard at the time with a combined score of 212.68, both of which were personal bests.The duo had some perfectly-executed elements, like their throw triple salchow, but stumbled on others. They received a score of 123.92 in the free skate, which combines with their 74.13 in the short program for a score of 198.05. Ashley Cain-Gribble also typically known because of her sports a bejeweled unitard that matches Timothy LeDuc’s outfit received a technical score of 59.74 and component score of 66.18, losing two points on mandatory deductions after falls by Cain-Gribble on the side-by-side triple loop and jump combination.With six pairs remaining, they currently sit in second behind Japan's Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, who were the best progression of this year, and won a Bronze Olympic medal at the team event have a combined score of 211.89 after receiving a 76.10 in the short program and 141.04 in the free skate.
 

History maker with the highest-Ever Scoring Pairs Figure Skate

Trained by Zhao Hongbo, the first Chinese Olympic champion in pairs in 2010, the duo Sui Wenjing and Han Cong are omnipresent, in a country that still has few internationally recognized winter sports stars. In the streets and in everyday life, in advertisements for insurance, cars and even cookies. The two-time world champions (2017, 2019) and Olympic vice-champions (2018) seduce, with their image of warriors, and her as a fierce powerful woman.

In 2007, Han Cong was paired with Sui Wenjing then 12 years old. Junior World Champions three years later, they landed on the senior circuit in 2010 and won the Four Continents Championship in 2012. But the joy is short-lived: the same year, Sui Wenjing is diagnosed with a bone disease and the rupture of several ligaments in a foot. Unable to train on the ice for a year and a half, the couple continued to rehearse their choreographies in the gym. This long break will paradoxically help them because it will strengthen their complicity, so important on the ice. Other glitches would follow for Sui Wenjing (stress fracture in the foot in 2018) and Han Cong (hip surgery in 2020), which did not prevent them from being crowned world champions in 2017, then in 2019 and winning silver at the 2018 Olympics.

Approaching 30, the two skaters, who won Skate Canada and the Italian Grand Prix at the end of 2021, will likely play their last chance for Olympic gold on Feb. 18-19. Fresh off a record-breaking performance in the pairs short program, China's Sui Wenjing and Han Cong reached storybook gold in the free, earning the highest-ever score in pairs figure skating in Olympic history. In 2018, it all came down to a single jump. Four years after missing gold by just 0.43 points, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China flipped the script with a dazzling free skate to earn the highest pairs score ever and win the Olympic title.
 






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