It was a moment more than four decades in the making —
Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier are the 2022 World champions. The duo, in only their second season together as a team, ended the drought for American pairs last month in Montpellier, France, and captured the title by more than 20 points.
To put the significance of this accomplishment into perspective, the last time an American team won the World title, Jimmy Carter was President, bread was about 50 cents per loaf, and Gloria Gaynor topped the charts with her anthem "I Will Survive." Knierim and Frazier join Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, who won their title in 1979 in Vienna, and Karol Kennedy and Peter Kennedy who were the first American team to garner gold all the way back in 1950 in Wembley, Great Britain.
"Being part of this group is a wonderful thing to acknowledge and bring to light but I don't think Brandon and I have really processed being a part of that group right now," Knierim said as they were about to kick off the American
Stars on Ice tour. "I think it's so fresh and new that it's going to be something in 10 to 20 years that's really going to weigh differently than it does now."
Though they may be reluctant to include themselves in such an elite club, Frazier sees their coronation in France as validation of all the hard work and dedication that he and Knierim have put forth.
"Winning Worlds was just kind of like making the Olympic Team—it validated everything that Alexa and I did when we teamed up," he said. "It was just so much work that we had to put in and we started to see the results. Then you go from the Olympics to the World Championships to being World champions. On a personal level you're just stuck in a moment, and you just want to stay in that moment for a long time because you're just giving yourself that pat on the back that you know you did it."
It was a long season for the gold medalists, and it was not always a smooth ride, Knierim and Frazier admit. But they never faltered from their plan to focus on steady improvement rather than allowing placement to be the key metric for measuring their success as a team.
"We started training very early to prepare for the season, but we didn't put too much weight on being specifically ready at a specific time," Frazier explained. "We worked hard throughout the summer, and we felt like by August that it was time for us to put our content out there so that we could get feedback that we could use to establish the groundwork for our season."
After a steady showing in their three autumn events, Knierim and Frazier arrived in Nashville ready to defend their U.S. title in January, but COVID-19 would have other plans. The day before the short program, Frazier tested positive, and the duo was forced to withdraw from the competition. Suddenly the excitement of competing for a spot on the 2022 Olympic Team took a back seat to Frazier's recovery. Though they were not able to compete, Knierim and Frazier were honored to be nominated for a berth on the Olympic Team that competed in Beijing.
"I find that even in the most negative situations you can find a positive outcome to why it happened," Frazier said diplomatically. "This is like our Olympic Trials—I wanted to compete so bad and have the opportunity to defend our title. I had all the belief in the world that we were going to do that and to have that shot taken away just hurts."
Knierim added, "I think Brandon and I almost gained confidence after his COVID-19 diagnosis because we saw how much the committee believed in this by selecting us. There was hardship that came as a result of him getting sick and coming back to training, but when we got to the Olympics, we held ourselves to a higher standard because the committee had faith in us. I am not sure that we would have felt that otherwise."
The competition in Beijing started with the team event, for which Knierim and Frazier were selected. The duo was pleased with their performances and were excited to be part of the silver medal winning team but were disappointed when the medal ceremony was postponed due to and ongoing investigation into a Russian Olympic Committee team member's positive drug test.
"My favorite part about 2018 was the medal ceremony outside with our families," Knierim recalled about being part of the bronze medal winning team in Pyeongchang. "It was like negative 10 degrees in this monumental moment like no other, and it makes me so angry that we missed out on that opportunity in Beijing."
Frazier was looking forward to sharing the moment with Knierim and the rest of Team USA, and despite promises from the International Olympic Committee that there will be a medal ceremony at a later date, he does not feel it will have the same pomp and circumstance as it would have had in Beijing.
"Nothing will ever be able to replicate having the ceremony in the Olympic community," he explained. "When you are done competing, everything is so fresh and that's the time when you should be rewarded. It's the way they've always done it. I understand that there are a lot of moving parts to this, but there still should have been a victory ceremony for the results at hand. If there were changes later then they could have fixed that the way that they have done in the past, but I guess that I have to trust that the right thing will find its way."
Knierim and Frazier closed out their Olympic experience in Beijing with a sixth-place finish in the individual event, the best showing by an American pair in two decades. They said that the lack of distractions due to the tight COVID-19 restrictions played in their favor.
"It was the first time that I had experienced being away from Chris that many weeks in a row," Knierim said of her husband and former partner. "The positive thing about it was that we got to kind of make that place home because we weren't allowed to leave the village. Brandon and I got into a really smooth routine and became very comfortable with the ice conditions and training environment. After three or four days we kind of just settled in and it felt like home."
Now with the competition season over, Knierim and Frazier have already wrapped up a stint in the Japanese
Stars on Ice tour and are currently traveling across the United States on the domestic Stars on Ice tour. Once the tour is over, Knierim and Frazier plan to take some time away from skating to enjoy a well-earned vacation. When they finally return home, they plan to discuss what their future may hold as a team and as individuals.
"Alexa and I really haven't circled around to discussing our future, we've really been living in the moment," Frazier admitted. "We've spent the last two years working and building up a plan, and now after achieving a lot of things we had hoped to achieve, we both we just want to enjoy the tour and when we get back in June, I know we'll circle back around and talk and see what our interests are."
Knierim added, "I think we'll just listen to our hearts. I believe a huge reason Brandon and I have been able to be successful is because we are vulnerable and honest with each other, and I think that's what has propelled us forward. When it comes down to it, we'll just listen to our gut and intuition on what is next for us individually and will be able to express that without concern."
