The U.S. pairs workforce of Ellie Kam, 21, and Danny O’Shea, 34, delivered the skate of their lives on the Olympics, placing collectively a career-best efficiency when the workforce wanted it most.
Skating within the pairs phase of the Olympic workforce competitors, Kam and O’Shea — who’ve been skating collectively for 4 years and prepare out of Colorado Springs — entered the ice underneath strain. As NBC’s Terry Gannon famous earlier than they started, “The U.S. with a five-point lead, however this isn’t their robust swimsuit.”
What adopted was a near-flawless efficiency.
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They opened by nailing their triple twist. “Lovely begin there with that triple twist,” stated commentator and former Olympian Tara Lipinski. They adopted it with a clear side-by-side triple salchow-double axel mixture, setting the tone early.
Consideration then turned to the weather that had troubled them most in observe: the throws. “Essentially the most tough ingredient for this workforce is the throws,” commentator Johnny Weir defined, noting that they’d solely landed one cleanly throughout a number of observe makes an attempt.
Below Olympic strain, Kam and O’Shea delivered.
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They nailed the primary throw, a triple lutz. “Lovely!” Weir exclaimed. Moments later, they attacked the second — a throw triple loop — with Weir including, “That is their likelihood at an Olympic medal, and so they’re skating like they’re hungry for gold.”
Lipinski may barely comprise her response after the touchdown. “I haven’t seen them skate this nicely in a very long time,” she stated.
Their lifts introduced the gang to its toes. “In pairs, lifts are king. This is likely one of the most spectacular lifts,” Weir stated, with Lipinski responding, “I’ve chills.” O’Shea, often called one of many strongest lifters within the self-discipline, earned additional reward. “He is likely one of the finest lifters on the planet,” Lipinski added.
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As this system ended, the superlatives saved coming. “Overlook about assembly expectations, they simply exceeded them,” Gannon stated. Lipinski went even additional: “I haven’t seen them skate like that ever… they had been unstoppable.” Weir summed it up bluntly: “That was essentially the most improbable skate I’ve seen from them, completely beautiful from begin to end.”
Kam and O’Shea scored 135.36, a private finest.
Whereas closing standings had been nonetheless pending, their efficiency was particularly significant inside the Olympic workforce competitors, the place every nation fields skaters in males’s singles, girls’s singles, pairs, and ice dance. After earlier occasions, the U.S. workforce was sitting in first place, because of robust finishes from Madison Chock and Evan Bates in ice dance, Alysa Liu in girls’s singles, and Ilia Malinin in males’s singles.
After a fall throughout the quick program that left them in fifth place, Kam and O’Shea delivered precisely what the U.S. wanted. As Gannon put it, “In the event that they’re fourth, not fifth right here, that additional level for the U.S., that’s huge.”
As a substitute, they did excess of that—delivering an Olympic second they’ll always remember.
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