U.S. Pairs Earn Top-Eight Finishes for First Time Since 1998

Alexa Knierim wasn't quite ready to leave the world's biggest stage. After giving partner Brandon Frazier a big hug, she skated over to the Olympic rings painted at center ice and brushed her fingers across them.
 
"There's nothing more magical and special than skating on official Olympic ice, and I don't know if we will be on it again," Knierim said. "It's been our dream since we were kids and for me I just wanted to have that last touch."
 
It was the finishing touch for a program that gave Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier a personal-best score for both the free skate and total score and landed the duo in sixth place overall at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. Their finish is the highest in Olympic competition by a Team USA couple since Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman took fifth in 2002.
 
Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc placed eighth, giving the United States its highest finish by two pairs since 1998 when Ina and Jason Dungjen were fourth and Jenni Meno and Todd Sand placed eighth.
 
Meno and Sand are two of the coaches now guiding Knierim and Frazier, along with Knierim's husband, Chris Knierim, with whom she finished 15th and earned the team bronze medal at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
 
"It was the best we've performed our program since we teamed up," said Frazier, who began skating with Knierim about two years ago when Chris retired. "We just threw it all out there; we didn't let nerves or the competitive jitters get the best of us. I felt the energy with Alexa and I know she felt it from me and we attacked every part of that program."
 
Their throws were huge, with the only flaw occurring when Frazier doubled a planned side-by-side triple Salchow. They scored 138.45 points, exceeding by far the 128.97 they scored 12 days earlier in the team event and earning them a personal best at an international competition by nearly two points. Hanging onto the sixth place they staked out in the short program, they posted a total of 212.68 points.
 
"When Brandon and I are in sync with one another mentally and physically we have some stellar pair elements that are top notch and today we were able to execute them because we were just so in sync," Knierim said. "Sometimes it can be a little bit more challenging and that's the struggle of pairs skating in general."
 
About midway through the program to the music "Fix You," Frazier said he realized how well they were moving together.
 
"It's very rare for those moments to happen and I just told myself, 'Enjoy these last two minutes because you never know when you're going to get that back,'" Frazier said. "And I soaked up every second. I was just smiling, having fun. Every crossover felt like an element. It was just great. Everything you can ask for."
 
 Knierim also reveled in those moments, especially the lifts.
 
"I feel Iike the queen," she said. 
 
Wenjing Sui and Cong Han of China won the gold medal with 239.88 points, edging the Russian Olympic Committee's (ROC) Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov with 239.25. ROC's Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov earned the bronze with a total of 237.71.
 
Cain-Gribble and LeDuc scored 123.92 points for a total of 198.05, dropping one place from seventh after the short program. 
 
Skating to the powerful music from the film W.E., Cain-Gribble went for everything despite skating on a sprained right ankle. That's her landing leg, and she fell twice during the program, first on a triple loop and then on the final jump in a three-jump combination.
 
But Cain-Gribble landed cleanly on their final difficult element, a throw triple Salchow.
 
After their bows, she and LeDuc also weren't quite ready to leave the ice. LeDuc led Cain-Gribble in one final turn before they stepped off, where Peter Cain, Ashley's father and their coach, was waiting.
 
"I think it was important that we had that moment as we skated off the ice, just to look around one last time and say, 'We were here,'" LeDuc said.
 
Cain-Gribble said she had to separate herself from her competitive mindset to appreciate what they had accomplished, both on their journey and at their destination.
 
"It's been so much just to get to that point, so I wasn't going to let anything go, even if it meant really trying to go deep down and fight for everything," Cain-Gribble said. "So I'm happy that I went for everything, especially the toe and the loop and the Sal – even though I ended up going down – but I hope that people can look at that and see a lot of grit and fight in there."
 
LeDuc added that the program "was probably a good microcosm of everything that we are as a team, of just fighting through adversity and overcoming obstacles."
 
Cain-Gribble's father, a 1980 Olympian for Australia in pairs with his sister Elizabeth Cain, gave her a big hug.

"He just said, 'It's OK. It's OK. You're here and you fought really hard,'" Cain-Gribble explained.
 
Overall, Team USA earned three medals at the Olympic Winter Games, led by Nathan Chen's gold medal in men's singles. Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue won the bronze in ice dance, while a Team USA squad composed of Chen, Vincent Zhou, Karen Chen, Knierim and Frazier, Hubbell and Donohue, and Madison Chock and Evan Bates won the silver medal in the team event.