Ice Dancing, Mixed

The ice dance competition was held on 19 February 2018 and the free ice dance on 20 February 2018. A total of 24 teams qualified with each country allowed to enter a maximum of three teams. Nineteen quotas were assigned during the 2017 World Figure Skating Championships (Denmark returned their quota after it was discovered that one of their athletes did not have Danish citizenship, and there was no other eligible team). A further six quotas were given out at the 2017 CS Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany, which meant 48 athletes from 17 nations competed in PyeongChang.

Three-time World champions, Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir had already won three Olympic medals (2010 dance gold, 2014 dance silver, and 2014 team silver) by the time they arrived in PyeongChang. They had taken a break from the sport after the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and when they returned in time for the 2018 Olympic season, their Olympic free dance program “Moulin Rouge” was unveiled at the Canadian Championships, where they had received a perfect score of 124.70 points. By the time the individual ice dance competition started in PyeongChang, they had also captured a second Olympic gold medal in the team event. Not only were their main rivals their training partners, France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, they also shared the coaches of Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, which set up for an epic battle.

After the short program, the Canadians were in the lead scoring 83.67 points, breaking their own world record of 82.68, set in October 2017. The French were in second place, just 1.74 points behind Virtue and Moir, despite suffering a wardrobe malfunction. Americans Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue were in third place, with their teammates, siblings Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani, in fourth, with just 0.02 points separating the two American couples.

Entering the free skate long program in almost a dead-heat with the French team, Virtue and Moir had decided that since they were skating last, they were going to skate “blind”, and would not watch or listen to anyone else’s score from ahead of them. This meant that when they took to the ice, they did not know that their French training partners had set a combined world record 205.28 points, and were in the lead. When the Canadians received their own marks after their skate, they had no idea if their 122.40 points was enough to capture the gold medal – they hadn’t done the math and had to wait for the announcer to declare they had set a world record with a combined score of 206.07 points and had won. Papadakis and Cizeron finished with a total of 205.28 points to capture the silver medal. With their bronze medal, the Shibutani (nicknamed Shib Sibs) became USA’s first double medal-winner of the 2018 Games (having won bronze in the team event).

Virtue and Moir became the most decorated ice dancers in Olympic history at the 2018 Games, and tied with Gillis Grafström of Sweden, Sonja Henie of Norway and Russia’s Irina Rodnina, for having the most gold medals in Olympic figure skating history.