Milan — After years of practice and competition, American pair Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea finally skated on Olympic ice Friday, moving in near-perfect harmony in the team pair short program. Then, in a blink, Kam fell.
“We wish we were perfect every single time we step out on the ice,” the 21-year-old Kam said afterward with a melancholy smile. “But you know, ice is slippery.”
The notable part of their performance wasn’t the stumble—no amount of training removes every variable—but how quickly they recovered. With k.d. lang’s “Hallelujah” playing, Kam popped back up and slid into rhythm with O’Shea almost immediately.
“(Kam) didn’t need me to pick her up. She got up and went after the next thing,” said O’Shea, 34. “We put the past in the past, and stepped right into the next element.”
Their approach reflects common strategies skaters use to regain composure: extensive practice that rehearses recovery, clear in-program communication, and simple reset cues. “We focus [in training], so that if something does go wrong in competition, we don’t have to question anything. I’m going to be where he is,” Kam said. O’Shea added that he talks throughout their program; when mistakes happen it’s a deep breath and a shift to the next element.
They were not alone in hitting the ice that day. China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong—2022 Olympic champions—also fell during their team pair program. “We fell down this time,” Han Cong said. “We’ve skated well recently, but we just fell down, it’s very strange.” Sui noted they needed time to practice and recover from jet lag.
Sometimes a stumble precedes a remarkable comeback. At the 2006 Turin Games, China’s Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao attempted a risky throw that had never been landed in major competition. Zhang Dan fell hard, injuring her knee and leaving the ice. Remarkably, the pair returned shortly afterward and earned a silver medal. “When the music started again we didn’t know where to start our elements, but we gave a gesture and then we carried on,” Zhang Dan said. “Gradually, after we restarted we became more and more clear in our minds how to do these elements. We wanted to go on.”
In 2018, U.S. skater Nathan Chen fell repeatedly in South Korea but rebounded to make Olympic history by landing six quadruple jumps in a single free skate. “I was like, I already fell so many times, I might as well go out and throw everything down and see what happens,” Chen told NPR at the time. “Screw it, I have nothing to lose.”
The aim, of course, is to avoid major falls and to recover with minimal drama. That was the case Friday in Milan when 20-year-old Alysa Liu of the U.S. wobbled on a double axel and grimaced but quickly recovered, landing subsequent jumps cleanly. “I was like, whoopsies!” Liu laughed afterward. She finished strong, earning second place for her segment and helping push the U.S. team into first place in the overall team event that continues through Sunday.
