By Maura Sullivan Hill, Team FSO Contributing Writer
Photos by Robin Ritoss
St. Louis, MO — Questions about skaters’ American citizenship hung over the senior pairs event all week in St. Louis at the 2026 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships. The question on everyone’s mind was whether defending champion Alisa Efimova would obtain U.S. citizenship in time to be named to the 2026 Olympic Team.
But on the ice, the skaters still had a job to do, Efimova included. The 2026 U.S. Championships determine not only the Olympic team, but international assignments for the rest of the season – Four Continents and the World Championships – as well as potential for funding and international assignments next fall. There was plenty at stake beyond the Olympics in the pairs event, which started out with a strong short program and ended with a messy free skate.
When all was said and done, Efimova and her partner Misha Mitrofanov defended their title and became the first U.S. pairs champions to win twice in a row since Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir in 2013 and 2014.
“I have never been in this position, so this was a completely new experience,” Efimova said at the post-event press conference. “You don’t know how it feels to compete as a reigning national champion until you actually do it. It does bring extra pressure; it does bring more fire and the will to defend that title, so it was very exciting and good for our future.”
The duo skates with some of the best performance quality in the competition, but had some bobbles on the side-by-side jumps in their free skate, set to “Love Story.”
2024 U.S. Champions Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea finished in second place. In the free, Kam had issues on the side-by-side jumps, putting a hand down on the triple toe and singling the planned double axel in their triple salchow-double axel sequence, then she fell on their throw triple lutz. The short was imperfect as well, with Kam falling on the side-by-side triple salchows and stepping out of their throw triple loop.
Despite the mistakes here, the pair is a likely choice for the Olympic team given their silver medal here and successful fall season, including two bronze medals on the Grand Prix circuit.
“There’s so much yet still to come and hopefully still another climb for us to peak, as we’ve been working on hard this season, later in the year,” O’Shea said. “We peaked early last year and the goal was to change that for this season. It’s been a huge part of our quad planning and our season planning. And to have it come to fruition [qualifying for the Olympics] after, I think someone told me 14 years on Team USA, it would be a dream come true.”
Bronze Medalists Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman, who are not eligible for the Olympics due to Parkman’s citizenship, were the only pair in the event to try side-by-side triple flips. It didn’t succeed this time, with both falling and it getting called underrotated.
“I’m proud of us for going for the flip,” McBeath said. “Because no other team is doing that right now. It was a risk and we took it, and I’m happy that we went for it. It’s just another step. We’ll get there on that. We’ve grown so much, so I’m proud of us for that. We have a long way to go.”
Both skaters said they would be eager and ready for other international assignments.
“I truly believe Danii and I have such a high ceiling, and we’re just working toward that. And sometimes that just takes a little extra time, and that’s awesome, and we have the time,” McBeath said while confirming that they plan to continue competing together. “We both love skating with each other…and I think that’s why the audience can respond to us well, because we love skating together, and we’ll just keep moving forward.”
Pewter medalists Emily Chan and Spencer Howe had a disastrous short program and had to skate the long program in the first group, earlier in the afternoon than the rest of the contenders, who competed in prime time for TV in the evening. In the short, Chan fell on the side-by-side triple toe loop and then they tripped heading into their throw. They had to reset to attempt the throw triple loop and she ended up falling.
“We definitely had an unexpected short program for us. We had never been in the first group at nationals going into the long. Emily came off the ice after the short program and told me, ‘This is my worst nightmare.’ I told her, ‘Listen, we have a job to do, and this is not over; you can feel that way after Friday,’” Howe said. “ So we leveraged our team and Emily and I stayed focused throughout the rest of the competition. We just relied on our training and were able to deliver a decent long that we were happy with. We are grateful for how it turned out.”
That focus paid off, because they ended up in third place thanks to their solid performance in a generally messy free skate among all the pairs. Audrey Shin and Balaz Nagy, who finished in second place after the short, got dinged with underrotations on their jumps and negative GOE on their triple twist and final lift and ended the competition in fifth place.
It was a shocking jump back into the Olympic conversation for Chan and Howe, who many counted out after their difficult short program. Now they will be considered alongside Shin and Nagy for the second U.S. Olympic pairs spot, with the first spot more than likely going to Kam and O’Shea.
But after the event on Friday night, Efimova and Mitrofanov still held out hope that they might be able to sort out her citizenship status before the team is chosen.
“To make it to the Olympic team, it is a dream and it is still alive,” Efimova said at the post-event press conference. “So I really, really hope that there is a little chance it can happen.”
U.S. Figure Skating Chief Executive Officer Matt Farrell spoke to the media before the pairs press conference and said that the selection committee would meet at 8:30 am Saturday morning, Jan. 10, to nominate the team and that Efimova would need a passport by the time of nomination. The Olympic Team will be announced live on NBC at 1 pm on Sunday, Jan. 11, so the public will learn her fate that time, but it certainly seems like a long shot. The only hope would be a Senate bill, according to Kat Cornetta a freelance reporter for The Boston Globe, the hometown paper of Efimova/Mitrofanov, and of the Edges and Execution figure skating Substack, who has closely followed Efimova’s citizenship process.
Stay tuned for the Olympic Team Announcement show live on NBC at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 11 to find out who makes the team for the U.S. pairs.
