Team USA Nabs Second Gold in Team Skate

In a tight competition between the USA and Japan, Madison Chock and Evan Bates delivered a spellbinding performance, while Ilia Malinin came out spinning to secure Team USA’s second gold medal of the Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games, defending its 2022 gold medal in the team skate competition.

Team skate consists of four disciplines: ice dance, pair skating, and men’s and women’s single skating, with points being assigned to each team based on the skater’s placement in each discipline. In the qualifier event, Team USA secured 34 points, just one point over Team Japan. Italy, Canada, and Georgia all vied for third place in the final.

In the final round, Team USA was able to keep Japan locked in a tie through the first three disciplines, thanks to an exceptional performance by Chock and Bates. Pair skaters Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea put in a performance that maintained the team’s lead going into the final event, while women’s single skater Amber Glen’s performance secured third place and left the US and Japan in a 59-59 tie.

This was the closest the field has ever been in the team skate event, which debuted in the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

“It’s going to come down to a kitten’s whisker,” observed Johnny Weir, a retired figure skater, during his commentary for NBC Sports.

That kitten’s whisker was decided by most highly anticipated performances, Malinin’s free skate final performance. The 21 year old Malinin earned the nickname the “Quad God” given the prevalence of four rotations in many of his moves, including a quadruple axel jump that was universally considered to be impossible before he performed it. Malinin is the only person to have successfully landed a quadruple axel jump in competition; he had one planned for his routine in his Olympic debut competition but only executed a triple axel during the routine, though he executed two of them.

Malinin did have to recover from one slip up in his routine that opened the door for Japan’s Shun Sato to make it very close in his own Olympic debut. Sato’s routine was not as technically difficult as Malinin’s, but Sato executed nearly every move to near perfection. Ultimately, it was not enough with the factored components score, which considers composition, presentation, and skating skills, and handed Malinin the victory and Team USA the gold with a team score of 69. Japan got the silver medal with 68 points.

Italy secured third place after Matteo Rizzo delivered a men’s single skate performance that kept Canada and Georgia off the podium.

Individual skating events will occur later in the Olympic games, and the individual’s performance will not be impacted by these scores.