ST. LOUIS (AP) — Alisha Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov defended their pairs title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Friday night, and now have a nervous wait to see whether her citizenship will be approved in time to compete at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
While he is a U.S. citizen, born in Wisconsin and raised in Texas, the 26-year-old Efimova was born in Finland and has competed for Germany and Russia along with her native country. Only citizens of the country they represent are eligible for the Olympics, though, and while Mitrofanov and Efimova are married and she has a green card, she has not received an American passport yet.
The Skating Club of Boston, where the couple trains, and U.S. Figure Skating have been working to get the typical three-year waiting period for citizenship expedited. But time is running out before Sunday’s deadline to announce the Olympic team.
Despite a couple of errors on their jumps, including a scary moment when Mitrofanov was nearly clipped by Efimova's skate, the pair finished with 207.71 points, easily outdistancing Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea for their second straight national championship.
Kam and O'Shea finished with 197.12 points and Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman were third with 187.45.
The women’s title will be decided Friday night in what amounts to a showdown between two-time defending champion Amber Glenn and reigning world champ Alysa Liu, who finished second at nationals a year ago by the slimmest of margins.
Glenn led after breaking the record for a women’s short program at the U.S. championships with 83.05 points, while Liu was second with 81.11 points. Isabeau Levito was third, Sarah Everhardt fourth and Bradie Tennell fifth.
The Americans have qualified the maximum three women’s spots on the Olympic team.
They only have two spots in pairs.
Efimova and Mitrofanov would get one, should her citizenship get approved at the last minute. Kam and O'Shea are near locks to make their first Olympic team, while McBeath and Parkman are unable to go because he likewise does not have U.S. citizenship.
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That could leave U.S. Figure Skating to make a judgment call on the second pairs team it sends to the Milan Cortina Games.
Emily Chan and Spencer Howe rallied from eighth after a difficult short program to finish fourth with 186.52 points Friday night, while the up-and-coming team of Audrey Shin and Balazs Nagy were less than two points behind in fifth place.
Yet ahead of them all were Efimova and Mitrofanov, the clear-cut best of American pairs skating.
Their free skate, set to “Where Do I Begin?” from the 1970 Arthur Hiller romantic drama “Love Story," was intended to be a tribute to two-time Olympic champions Katia Gordeeva and Sergey Grinkov, who was just 28 when he died of a heart attack in 1995.
Efimova and Mitrofanov opened with a beautiful triple twist, but then a sequence went awry after their triple salchow when he fell during a double axel, and Efimova nearly wiped his forehead with her skate blade. She also struggled on their side-by-side triple toe loops later in the program, but a strong finishing sequence left no doubt that they would repeat as champions.
Kam and O'Shea, the 2024 national champions, gave it their best shot at getting back to the top of the podium.
But they likewise had just enough mistakes during their free skate, set to music from the Eurythmics, The Beatles and Tears for Fear, to keep them in second place. Kam put her hand down on their triple toe loops, she made a mistake after their triple salchow during an intended sequence of jumps, and she later fell on their throw triple lutz.
Still, the 21-year-old Kam and the 34-year-old Shea did enough to likely lock up a spot for the Winter Games.
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