Milan — After years of training and competition, American pair Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea finally performed on Olympic ice Friday. Their team pairs short program moved with near-perfect timing until Kam unexpectedly slipped and fell. The mistake was abrupt and unmistakable. “We wish we were perfect every single time we step out on the ice,” the 21-year-old Kam said afterward with a rueful smile. “But you know, ice is slippery.”
What made the moment notable was not the error itself but how quickly the pair recovered. With k.d. lang’s “Hallelujah” underscoring the program, Kam pushed up, rose and rejoined O’Shea, slipping back into the choreography as if the fall had been only a brief interruption. “She 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.”
That capacity to reset comes from repetition, clear communication and steadiness under pressure. “It’s a lot of practice, for sure,” Kam said. In training they rehearse recovering so competition slip-ups don’t force split-second doubts: “I’m going to be where he is,” she added. O’Shea said he talks to her during routines and that their immediate strategy after a fall is simple: take a deep breath, calm down and focus on the next move. “All right, calm, one more thing, spin,” he said.
They were not alone. China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, the 2022 Olympic champions, also hit the ice hard during the team pairs skate. “We fell down this time,” Han said after their program. “We’ve skated well recently, but we just fell down, it’s very strange.” Sui said they would use the time before their next event to practice and regroup.
The sport’s history is full of recoveries that turned calamity into triumph. At the 2006 Turin Games, China’s Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao attempted a high-risk throw that went wrong; Zhang Dan fell into a painful split and left the ice injured. The duo came back later in the competition and, despite the shock and uncertainty about where to resume their routine, completed the program and earned the silver medal. “Gradually, after we restarted we became more and more clear in our minds how to do these elements,” Zhang Dan recalled. “We wanted to go on.”
Individual skaters have shown similar resilience. In 2018, U.S. skater Nathan Chen fell multiple times in PyeongChang but then embraced a fearless approach: “I already fell so many times, I might as well go out and throw everything down and see what happens,” he told NPR. He went on to land six quadruple jumps in a single free skate, creating an unforgettable moment.
Smaller mistakes can be handled with equal poise. During Friday’s team women’s competition in Milan, American Alysa Liu landed awkwardly off a double axel and grimaced — then laughed. “I was like, whoopsies!” the 20-year-old said. She recovered, stuck the subsequent landings and helped the U.S. retain the lead in the team standings.
Falls are woven into figure skating’s storylines as much as its triumphs. The line between a stumble and a disaster usually depends less on the misstep itself than on preparation, quick communication between partners or coaches, and the skater’s ability to breathe, refocus and skate the next element with conviction. When those pieces click, a fall becomes only a brief punctuation in a performance that can still soar.