BEIJING, China — Team USA is getting off to a winning start at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and they're hoping to keep the momentum as some of the world's best figure skaters go for gold -- but they'll have some stiff competition.
Pairs Free Skate, Ice Dance Free Dance and Women's Free Skate will take over the Olympic schedule Sunday as athletes hit the ice at 8:15 p.m. EST.
Russia is typically the team to beat, but there are a few pairs to keep an eye on.
Pairs Free Skate
Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier will compete in the pairs free skate, representing Team USA.
Knierim ended her longtime skating partnership with husband Chris Knierim in February 2020 following his decision to retire from competitions. Frazier, who was also without a partner, decided to also try his luck with Knierim and the two have proven to be a winning pair.
Ready to showcase their dynamic during this leg of the competition, the two will have to out-skate their competition in a big way.
You can watch a live stream of the event here.
Ice Dance Free Dance
Team USA's Madison Chock and Evan Bates were tapped as co-captions, meant to help lead the U.S. group for figure skating's team events in Beijing.
The two will also compete Sunday, showing off their charisma during the free dance portion of the competition. Chock and Bates will likely bring different chemistry as they're a couple on and off the ice.
It will be their debut at any Olympic event. Spoiler, the two are expected to elegantly groove to a blues and hip-hop rhythm dance set during their time on the ice.
However, Chock and Bates will have to out-dance world champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France and Viktoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov of the Russian Olympic Committee and Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.
You can watch a live stream of tonight's event here.
Women's Free Skate
U.S. Figure Skating announced Karen Chen would skate the women’s long program and close out the day of figure skating for Team USA.
Chen is working to come back from a fall during her short program.
During that event, Olympic favorite and Russian Kamila Valieva gave an incredible performance, nearly breaking a world record after becoming the fourth woman in Olympic history to land a triple axel, according to Olympics records.
With talent like that, Chen will have to make sure her nerves don't get the best of her to help push the U.S. past Russia.
You can watch a live stream of the event here.
The complete roster of U.S. figure skaters according to NBC is:
- Jean-Luc Baker (Ice Dance)
- Evan Bates (Ice Dance)
- Mariah Bell (Women’s Singles)
- Jason Brown (Men’s Singles)
- Ashley Cain-Gribble (Pairs)
- Karen Chen (Women’s Singles)
- Nathan Chen (Men’s Singles)
- Zachary Donohue (Ice Dance)
- Brandon Frazier (Pairs)
- Kaitlin Hawayek (Ice Dance)
- Madison Hubbell (Ice Dance)
- Alexa Knierim (Pairs)
- Timothy LeDuc (Pairs)
- Alysa Liu (Women’s Singles)
- Vincent Zhou (Men’s Singles)
- Madison Chock (Ice Dance)