Pairs, Mixed

Originally only 20 spots were available at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, with each country allowed to enter a maximum of three teams. With the invitation of the North and South Korean teams, the quota jumped to 22 teams – South Korea as hosts. Sixteen quotas were given at the 2017 World Figure Skating Championships and four were given at the 2017 CS Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany (where North Korea originally qualified, but did not register its athletes in time due to not knowing if they were even going to PyeongChang.) The Olympic competition was held at the Gangneung Ice Arena with the short program held on 14 February and the free skating on 15 February 2018.

Entering PyeongChang 2018, it was going to be a two-pair race for gold with the emotional edge going to Germany’s Aljona Sawtchenko and Bruno Massot. Sawtchenko, the five-time World champion who, with her new partner of 3 ½ years and Olympic rookie Massot, was competing in her fifth Olympic Games and mining for gold, having won bronzes in Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014 with Robin Szolkowy. PyeongChang was perhaps the best chance Sawtchenko ever had to win the gold. Interestingly, neither she nor Massot were originally from Germany. She made her Olympic début representing Ukraine in Salt Lake City 2002 with Stanislav Morozov. Massot was a native Frenchman who had to acquire German citizenship to compete at the Olympics with Sawtchenko.

Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China arrived in PyeongChang as the reigning World champions and even after Sui’s surgeries on both feet in 2016, they won four events in a row, before having their streak snapped by Sawtchenko and Massot at the 2017 Grand Prix Final. They would need two flawless skates to climb to the top of the Olympic podium. The difference between the German and Chinese teams would lie in the components, especially in the free skate.

The team that could upset the two favourites were the Russians, or “Olympic Athletes from Russia” (OAR), Yevgeniya Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, the 2017 World bronze medalists. They were turning heads, not only with their quadruple twist, but with their win in the pairs event in the 2018 Olympic team competition.

Canadians Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, the two-time World champions (2015, 2016), were full of confidence having won Olympic gold in the 2018 team event (where Radford became the first openly gay man to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympics) and would make one last run at the Olympic podium after a season of soul-searching.

After the short program, China’s reigning World champions Sui and Han scored 82.39 points for their flawless skate to k.d. lang’s version of “Hallelujah.” Tarasova and Morozov, the last team to go, bumped the Canadians down to third with an 81.68 points skate, and were sitting in second place, less than one point separating them from the Chinese. Unfortunately, Germany’s Massot doubled a planned triple salchow, landing them in fourth with 76.59 points.

Entering the free skate long program, Savchenko and Massot set a record with their score of 159.31 for a total of 235.90 points, rising from fourth to first – and winning the first pairs medal for Germany since 1952. Savchenko tied the medal record in Olympic pairs skating with three medals (with two different partners). Sui and Han of China made a couple of mistakes in the free program, and won the silver – the first Olympic medal in pairs skating for China since the team’s coach, Zhao Hongbo, won gold in Vancouver 2010 (with Shen Xue.

The Canadians Duhamel and Radford, who were seventh in Sochi 2014, remained solid and held on to their third position for the bronze medal. They were the first Canadian pairs team to win an Olympic medal since Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who shared gold with Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games at Salt Lake City.

Russians Tarasova and Morozov, skated last in the long program, and let their nerves get to them, committing two major errors dropping them to fourth and off the podium. This was the second Olympics since 1964 that a Soviet or Russian pair did not win a medal.