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<\/a><\/p>\nNASHVILLE, TENN — Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc won their second U.S. pairs title in convincing fashion, eclipsing their previous U.S. personal best by 12.87 points with a total score of 225.23. And they also punched their ticket to Beijing, earning a spot on the 2022 U.S. Olympic Team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re so excited and so grateful. This is a career-long goal accomplished, and now our focus turns to what we want to accomplish at the Olympics,\u201d said LeDuc, the first openly non-binary athlete to qualify for the Olympics. \u201cWe\u2019re ready to go. We\u2019ve worked really hard all season, building ourselves up, and we feel like we have more room to grow to show really our best programs ever at the Olympics. We\u2019re just so amped up and excited for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
They set a new U.S. record in the short program with their score of 79.39, where they looked sharp and clean. In the free skate, they built on that and had a solid outing, with the only error being Cain-Gribble\u2019s double salchow in the triple salchow-double toe-double loop combo. They earned Level 4 on all their lifts and the pair spin, with a Level 3 on the triple twist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of our team and the way that we handled everything this season and over the last four years,\u201d Cain-Gribble said after the free skate. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty speechless right now, because I think we were so laser focused this whole week that we feel tired. We feel exhausted, but just so much relief and gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conspicuously absent from the competition were defending champions Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, due to Frazier testing positive for COVID-19 earlier in the week. The pair petitioned and earned a spot on the 2022 Olympic team, Knierim\u2019s second Olympics and Frazier\u2019s first.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am super honored and grateful to be named to the team with Brandon. I believe the best is yet to come,\u201d said Knierim, who came to the team announcement in person. \u201cWe were so ready and prepared to compete here this week, it was devastating for us [to withdraw], but obviously right now we’re on cloud nine, so it\u2019s been a roller coaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frazier joined the press conference via Zoom from his hotel room, and said he was feeling \u201c100 percent back to normal.\u201d Frazier was alone in his hotel room when Knierim called him on Facetime to tell him they made the Olympic team.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It] was bittersweet, just because I wasn\u2019t even able to hug Brandon and share that moment with him, but luckily my family was here with me and Chris [Knierim, her husband and previous partner],\u201d Knierim said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the moment I wanted Brandon to have, making his first Olympic team, so that\u2019s a little bit hard for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frazier shared: \u201cI know every athlete that wants to make the Olympic Team, they dream that few seconds when they get that notification, what it\u2019s gonna be like. I never imagined it to be how it actually went down last night, but that\u2019s when I knew that this truly meant the absolute world to me, because I was just as happy when I found out on Facetime with Alexa and Chris. Obviously, I wish I could be around Alexa, wish I could be around my family \u2014 that would have made it that much sweeter, but I think my smile was just as big.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jump troubled plagued them in the free skate. She doubled the side-by-side triple salchows and he had trouble on the triple toe-double toe combo, and they had a two-foot landing on the throw triple salchow.<\/p>\n \u201cAs you could tell, that wasn\u2019t the performance that we wanted. We haven\u2019t been training exactly like that, so we were hoping to have a better long program performance, but just the overall week, we really wanted to take the approach to just stay present, stay in the moment because this was a moment that we really didn\u2019t think we were going to have,\u201d said Calalang, who was cleared of doping allegations earlier this year when it was found that a makeup product she used metabolized into a banned substance. \u201cSo I feel like we accomplished that. We took everything step by step. In that performance we really had to fight for each element. It wasn\u2019t easy, but you know we got it done and we moved on, one element to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n Calalang and Johnson are the first alternates for both the Olympic and World teams.<\/p>\n<\/a>Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson won their third consecutive U.S. silver medal with a score of 209.87. Their lifts were the class of the field and earned all Level 4s, along with their triple twist. Calalang took a hard fall in the warm up but was able to recover for the performance.<\/p>\n