Tears and Fears

Tears are not enough.

The tears were rolling down Ryuichi Kihara’s face. Nobody sobbed as much as Ryuichi Kihara at the Olympic pairs figure skating event. There wasn’t a tissue box in the house that could contain those tears. They were tidal. But can you blame him?

Kihara, now 33 years old, was on his fourth trip to the Olympics in Milan. The first two times, in 2014 and 2018 – Japan was hardly a pair skating power in those days – he and his two different partners had finished near the back of the pack, in fact not qualifying for the free skate. With a new partner, Riku Miura, he finished seventh at the 2022 Olympics.

On Feb. 16, he and Miura won the gold medal, Japan’s first in an Olympic pair event. And with their speed, and quality elements and charming way about them, this time, they were in a class by themselves.

It didn’t look at all certain after the short program on Feb. 15, however. The pair aborted their Axel lasso lift, still earning a couple of levels and getting a smattering of points. But lifts are the big money makers in pair skating and there was only one lift in the short program.

The incident plunged the favourites to fifth place. Nobody had ever won a pair Olympic gold from fifth place in the short program. And they had come, seeking gold.

The Japanese judge placed them only ninth, a little bit of a wake-up bunt, placing them behind even the Chinese defending Olympic champions Wenjing Sui and Cong Han, who had come out of retirement, and were skating injured, held together by tape, it seemed.

Kihara, thinking it was all his fault, began to sob. The sobbing went on, it seemed, forever. He hung his head out on the ice and in the aptly named kiss and cry. Nobody had cried more in the “kiss and cry” than Kihara. That’s what the “kiss and cry” is for, apparently, but nobody had put their kiss upon it quite as fervently.

It carried on to the next day. “I couldn’t stop crying, today,” Kihara said.

“I was so frustrated, I couldn’t sleep last night,” he said. “I didn’t have a good quality of sleep.

“I couldn’t stop my tears since I arrived at the rink, even at practices, from warm-up. It was a feeling that I didn’t understand, something I never experienced before.”

His coach, Bruno Marcotte, started the recovery process as soon as they stepped off the ice following the short program. “It’s not over,” he said, emphatically, in ways that could be lip-read thousands of miles away.

Along with other messages of support, Kihara began to change his mindset. The free skate, he reasoned, was the place they would fight. “There’s no way we could give up at these Olympics,” he said. “We told ourselves we would absolutely attack until the end. “

He had been crying since morning. Miura had not. She proved to be the strength in a hurricane.

“We can absolutely do this,” she told him.

Because Kihara’s disappointment had been so intense, Miura took over the role of supporting him. ”I didn’t fall that much emotionally,” she said. “I don’t think I ever broke mentally.”

What Kihara had given the rookie Miura, she was now giving back to her stricken partner. “In the past, I wouldn’t have been able to be this strong,” she said. “It’s because of all the work we built together and the support he’s given me through every competition, that I was able to become strong at this event.”

Before they stepped onto the ice for the free skate, Miura told her partner: “This time, I’ll skate for you.”

Kihara responded by saying: “Let’s skate for each other. If it’s us, we can definitely do it.”

And they did.

It was magical. Olympic.

Their triple twist soared. An element always frustrating for other skaters – a three-jump sequence – sailed along, a big triple toe loop with two double Axels after it. It was worth a whopping 10.80 points, but they made it 12.00 points with execution bonuses. Their Axel lasso lift this time went up without a hitch and drew enough admirers on the judging panel to get 2.70 bonus points for it. They did the most difficult throw done by pair skaters these days  – a throw triple Lutz – and it went swish. (Although most teams do a throw triple flip, only one other team did a throw triple Lutz: Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea of the United States.)

Their back outside death spiral – theirs is the best in the world – a combo spin, a difficult reverse lasso lift, and another lift all got the highest levels of difficulty – level 4, worth the most points. There was nothing they could not do, and do well. The audience erupted, like Vesuvius.

They scored an incredible 158.13 in the free skate – a world record – and won with a total of 231.24 points, about 10 points more than silver medalists Anastasia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia. The Japanese had been seven points down from the short program leaders, Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany, who finished in the end with the bronze medal. Hase and Volodin were only fourth in the free skate, felled by jump mistakes.

Miura and Kihara also set a world record for the highest technical score in a free skate: 82.73.

One of Kihara’s former partners, Narumi Takahashi, was doing commentary.

Nobody was surprised when Kihara dissolved into tears at program’s end.

Miura remained the steady rock. They hugged. “You’ve been crying all day,” Miura said to him. “Seriously? My goodness.”

To reporters afterward Miura said: “First of all, Ryuichi was basically crying the whole time.”

“I was crying, but not the whole time,” Kihara said.

Miura snitched: “He was crying even during the warmup, quite a lot. He was crying during the free program, too. When I asked: ‘What are you crying about?’ during practice, he said: ‘I don’t even know why I’m crying any more.

“You’re like a baby,” Miura told him.

“Everyone was worried at the practice,” he said.

It’s his party. He can cry if he wants to.

Everyone was worried about the fate of 42-year-old Deanna Stellato-Dudek, the 2024 world champion with partner Maxime Deschamps, after she suffered an injury on Jan. 30, only 10 days before the Olympics back home in Montreal. At first, no one revealed what the injury was, but later, Stellato-Dudek said she had hit her head in practice, although she did not have a concussion. She would not discuss the circumstances and details, trying to get herself emotionally through the Olympics.

They did not even leave for Milan until a few days before competition and were forced to miss the team event, leaving Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud to bear the whole load for Canada. Pereira and Michaud competed four times at the Olympics.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps missed days of training, and she admitted that after being off the ice, she was initially afraid to do the easiest triple jump.

“You have fear, but you have to go through it,” she told reporters. “There is no other option.”

After a 16-year hiatus, Stellato-Dudek had returned to competition at age 34 to fulfill a dream and compete at the Olympics. It hasn’t been an easy trip, even though they won the 2024 world title. The next year, they finished fifth, and at the Grand Prix Final last December, they were sixth of six teams. And over the past couple of weeks, after coming all this way, her dream has been sorely tested.

It didn’t help that she suffered a fall in the short program on a lift, and another hard fall in practice the next morning on a throw triple Salchow. At 42, she’s the oldest competitor in the Olympic pair event.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps – one of the contenders for a medal – plunged to 14^th place, after Deschamps stepped out of a triple toe loop and with only 20 seconds to go in their short program, Stellato-Dudek fell from a lift, a point-heavy element. They ended up 8.56 points away from third spot, and 13.93 points behind the leaders.

The lifts have always been the Canadian’s strong suit.

In the free skate, the Canadians started strongly with a level-four triple twist, but scrambled through a jump series, where he stepped out of a triple toe, then did a double Axel, but she landed a triple toe loop and couldn’t get stuck from the landing. They got only a couple of points out of that. (Others, like the winners, do a triple jump with a couple of double Axels after it and get more than 10 points).

They skated carefully and a triple Salchow turned into a double. Their forward outside death spiral – a difficult move that they were the first to do – got only a level two. Their throw triple loop was a fight. The throw triple Salchow – on which she had fallen hard in practice – went well, but the look on her face on landing it spoke volumes. Two more lifts and they finally stepped away, alive and intact.

Except that in their final pose, they bonked noses, and Stellato-Dudek came out of it with a bloody nose. Par for the course.

Coach Josee Picard had tears in her eyes when they got off the ice. They finished ninth in the long program, 11^th overall.

“We lost two weeks of training leading up to this,” Stellato-Dudek said. “We had to make some strategic decisions going into the free program. But the way we held that together after not doing a run-through for two weeks is pretty amazing.”

After she was cleared by a medical doctor, they arrived only two days before their competition. She feels that if she had not fallen in the short program, they would have been skating in the final group, or close to it and they would have had a chance.

In spite of it all – and this might be frightening for 34-year-old Deschamps – Stellato-Dudek said in Milan that she is not certain that her career is finished, or that she’s done with it. It’s up to a doctor if she goes to the world championships next month in Prague. (In the end, they did not go.)

But said she: “I think the only limits you have are the ones that you set on yourself. Even though everybody loves to try to put limits on me because I’m 42, I don’t’ believe in any of that. Only I can put limits on myself. So I might see you again in four years. I’m the oldest one, just breaking all the records every time.’
How does Deschamps feel about that? “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to check.”

Pereira and Michaud – already the Canadian champions – have set themselves up as contenders for the next Games in 2030, although they had set  their goals only to the 2026 Olympics. There will be chats.  They accounted themselves well in Milan, finishing third in the short program, with the second highest tech score. And many thought they should have been second.

In the free skate, skating to “Gladiator,” a cascade of missteps – she stepped out of a throw triple loop, he fell on a triple Salchow, and they couldn’t make a death spiral work – dropped them to 10^th for the free, and eighth overall, just short of cracking the 200-point mark. They have been together 3 ½ years.

“We always focus on what we can control,” Pereira said. “We know that we have the quality. Over the years, we built up the levels. We have everything that we need to be where we want to be. …We were proud of our short program even before we got the scores.”

The defending Olympic champions Wenjing Sui and Cong Han brought an unexpected richness to the Olympic pair event, skating to “A Tapestry of a Legendary Land.”

They used music from a dance drama, celebrating a long silk tapestry with landscape painting from the Song Dynasty created 900 years ago. It features lush colours of green and indigo – reflected in the Chinese pair’s costumes. The tapestry is in the Beijing Palace Museum and was last displayed in 2017 because of its fragile nature. It’s one of its most valuable exhibits.

Sui and Han were also fragile, ancient treasures who returned to skating only six months ago to compete at the Olympics. She is 30 years old, he 34. Han had retired after the 2022 Olympics with back problems that couldn’t seem to be solved and was working as a teacher. Sui, in university studying to be a choreographer, wanted to continue, hooked up with another skater, and then, before you knew it, Han had returned just for her.

Leading up to the Olympics, the decision did not look wise. Sui also suffered an injury. Their lifts were scary. Landing jumps? Maybe not. They were shadows of their former selves. But in Milan, they were different, weaving their own tapestry. They rose to the feat, becoming something more, trotting out their old magic. Surprisingly, they finished sixth in the short program and with the spellbinding free routine, they finished fifth overall.

“That’s the end,” Han announced.

He said he returned, not to win medals, but to “see how far I could go, especially when my physical condition is not very good.”

He said he is still dealing with some pain, but he wanted to overcome it. He’s proud of himself.

Sui said she had some acupuncture, considered an injection, but decided against it. She took painkillers before she went on ice.

“From just half a year of recovery to now and achieving so much, we are proud to stand here,” Han said. “We hope that our recovery within half a year to return to competition can inspire more athletes, so they can experience the spirit of sports and the Olympic spirit.”

Sui was proud to be one of the creators of their special free skate, helping Canadian choreographer Lori Nichol. “We hope more audiences can see the beauty of traditional Chinese culture,” she said.

They ended their routine with choreographed gestures. Before stepping onto the ice, Sui said they should end the performance with a fist-and-palm salute.

“A first and palm salute?” said Han. “I thought it was a Chinese New Year greeting. I was actually wishing everyone a Happy New Year.”

The two are like “an old married couple,” said commentator Sandra Bezic. There is a video making the rounds on TikTok showing a collection of Sui and Han moments, with Sui constantly rolling her eyes at whatever he says. (But they are friends for life, she says.)

Sui says in future, she plans to travel the countryside in a trailer with her pet meercat, selling coffee.

Wait…she has a meercat?