Even before American pairs figure skaters Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea completed the final elements of their Olympic team event free skate, unbridled joy spread across their faces.
It was one of those rare moments when an athlete knows they’ve done everything they possibly could. Hitting their final pose, the two athletes immediately embraced with the final notes of their music.
They knew it was a career-best performance. And with American gold on increasingly rocky ground after the short programs, their free skate – which earned 4th on the night – would ultimately be foundational in helping Team USA win the Olympic title.
“It feels amazing,” O’Shea said the following morning. “We really just did that. To have that clutch performance, where you perform above expectations, in a moment like this, where our team was counting on us and we really needed to come through — it felt so good.”
When Kam and O’Shea first teamed up in 2022, their potential was evident. O’Shea, now 35, had come out of retirement to skate with Kam, now 21, after acting as her partnering coach, and after a 3rd-place finish at nationals in their first season, they followed it up with the U.S. national title and a bronze at the Four Continents Championships in 2024.
But fast-forward to a year ago, and it wasn’t certain their Olympic dreams would even be possible. A broken foot at the world championships for O’Shea (which he skated on to a 7th-place finish before having a major surgery that required two plates and 11 screws), followed by hernia surgery that he’d put off, and then a concussion for Kam — their Olympic season was almost over before it began.
After a few shaky domestic outings in the fall, they rallied at their two Grand Prix assignments, earning bronze-medals at each event despite some unstable performances. At U.S. nationals in January — an event that carries the greatest weight for Olympic team selection — they came 2nd with similarly imperfect programs that were strong enough to make it onto Team USA (U.S. national gold medalists Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov were not eligible).
So, heading into the Olympic team event, Kam and O’Shea were largely seen as the weakest link. Unlike traditional figure skating competitions, in the team event, skaters/pairs from each of the four disciplines are selected to compete for national teams. Skaters earn points based on their placements, which then determine each country’s overall result. Compared to their reigning-world-champion teammates in the other three disciplines, Kam and O’Shea’s track-record had just been too inconsistent.
That was until the undefeated U.S. “Quad God” Ilia Malinin faltered, and Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto dominated the women’s singles contingent of Alysa Liu and Amber Glenn. Suddenly Kam and O’Shea’s lights-out showing anchored the U.S. in their one-point lead over Team Japan.
“The pairs discipline in the U.S. is definitely still a work in progress, and we’re doing our best to step up to the level of the other people on the team,” Kam said, adding that she didn’t want to be seen as just being along for the ride on the path to a gold medal. “So, it was especially meaningful to put it out there and to contribute to the gold medal.”
With commentators calling Kam and O’Shea the “MVP’s” of the team event (along with Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who took 1st in both of their events), they still feel the energy of their win in the leadup to the individual pairs event on Sunday.
“We have a lot of momentum from skating well, and we have a great plan to go to an off-site training rink outside of the intensity and the scrutiny,” O’Shea said.
With the constant overstimulation of the Olympic Village, dorm-like living, meeting athletes from other sports and near-24/7 activity, Kam said she was glad to get several days to reset several hours away.
“I’ve never had to compete four times in a row and it’s definitely a different experience,” she said. “But it feels pretty comfortable. We just have to try to stay in the mindset and not get too caught up in the highs and lows of everything.”
With extremely strong pairs teams from Japan, Germany and Georgia to contend with, it is relatively unlikely that Kam and O’Shea will land on the podium again. But pairs is a notoriously dangerous and volatile discipline, and no result is out of the question.
No matter the results, the Americans say it wasn’t gold that drove their journey to Milan Cortina.
“Before we even left home, we decided that our goal for [the Olympics] was to come in and experience as much joy as we possibly could,” O’Shea said. “Not to worry about trying to be perfect, or force anything, but to soak it all in and bring as much joy to other people as we can.”
For anyone who saw them compete, it’s clear that goal was realized.
“As we were finishing our program, I had all the emotions,” Kam said. “The energy was so electric. And knowing [from fans] that it passed through the screen, means we feel like we did our job.”