Milan — After years of practice and competition, American pair Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea finally took the Olympic ice on 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.”
What drew attention wasn’t the stumble itself—no amount of training removes every variable—but how quickly the pair regrouped. 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 response reflects common strategies skaters use to restore focus: repetitive practice that includes rehearsed recoveries, constant 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 through the program; when mistakes happen it’s a deep breath and an immediate shift to the next element.
They were far from alone that day. China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, the 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 fall 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 and went on to claim the 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 recalled. “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 then. “Screw it, I have nothing to lose.”
The goal, of course, is to avoid major falls and to resume with minimal disruption. 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 to land subsequent jumps cleanly. “I was like, whoopsies!” Liu laughed afterward. She finished strong, earning second place in her segment and helping the U.S. team move into first overall in the ongoing team event.
Falling is part of the sport; the measure of a skater is often less the mistake itself than how they respond. Years of drilled recovery plans, calm communication, and a mindset that treats errors as moments to reset help athletes turn a slip into a stepping stone rather than an endpoint.