2025-26 US Pairs Discussion - Milano-Bound By Way of Beijing & St. Louis

farahfan said:
It’s news to me that USFS knew about this and is working actively towards it. You’re sure she meant federation and not skating club?
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That's a good question. Reviewing the audio from Champs Camp, Alisa/Misha did specify working with the Skating Club of Boston on the citizenship issue, not USFS.

Misha: In all honesty, we know the big question in terms of the Olympics circles us, and in all honesty, that is something that's out of our control right now. We have a lot of amazing people who have reached out to the Skating Club of Boston, and they have offered their support and their help. So a lot of that behind the scenes is happening.
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MacMadame said:
Honestly, deciding which adult marriages are 'shams' and which are real just doesn't sit well with me. I know plenty of people who married after months of dating who had real marriages and plenty of people who waited years, got married, and were divorced within a short period of time. These are adults who are making these choices and we are not privy to their thoughts or motivations unless they tell us.
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Also, define "sham." People get married for all kinds of reasons. Even arranged marriages are legal, as long as both parties are adults and consent.

I wish Alisa luck in getting her passport. The odds are not in her favor, but one never knows!
 
Honestly, I don’t see how anyone could have watched the interaction between Alisa and Misha this past year or so and doubted that they are a romantic couple. I never saw her smile until she came to the US and paired up with Misha. And he looks at her with such tenderness!

I say congratulations to them on their marriage and good luck getting citizenship in time for the Olympics!
 
Private Citizen said:
We need to resurrect the "I'm an outcast because...." thread because I like "Music" both generally and for skating :lol:.

Jacob Sanchez did a fantastic job with it last season, and the audiences loved it. It's so cheesy that it becomes wonderful.

And it goes better with Sing, Sing, Sing than it did with "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," which is what Berenzhaya and Shliakhov combined it with. :lol:
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I'm with you.

I think Music is a great piece and works wonderfully in a big arena.

Perfect for showy skaters like Sanchez and Williams/Lewer.

I saw Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov skate it live and in person when they took bronze at the 2017 World Championships in Helsinki, and it even gave cool technicians like them heart and soul.
 
~tapdancer~ said:
Ellie and Danny just skated a magnificent FS at Skate Canada. Ellie landed all her jumps and throws! Bronze medal. Very proud of them.
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I'm so pleased for them and love watching them skate. I hope they continue to have greater and greater confidence and success. Top overall and free skate scores for a US team so far this season.

Peacock had terrible streaming quality for me yesterday and the replay of Kam/O'Shea was bad as well. I was able to find a better video here - https://x.com/skatingarchive/status/1984771657022488648
 
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Skaterbob said:
Why would anyone despise Danny? He just seems like a sweet and hardworking person.
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I've always liked him. I think when Tarah's allegations against Dalilah came out people wondered where he was when it was all going down. It does not seem like things ended well between them. Of course we don't know the full story. Plus the age gap with him and Kam He also started out as her coach and then became her partner...
 
Alisa, Misha and Jimmy were interviewed on Rinkside today. Nick McCarvel never goes deep enough with his questions. He asked how they all enjoy living together when he should have asked how Jimmy enjoys living with a married couple 😁

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I don’t follow pairs closely but USFS has always put a lot of stock in experienced male partners. Danny benefited from this and it looks like Nagy does as well. Their other options, well Parkman’s not a citizen, Howe has been very flukey with injuries and consistency for years now, Flores/Wang have fallen apart.

I’m not defending the decision, just trying to figure it out.
 
PRlady said:
I don’t follow pairs closely but USFS has always put a lot of stock in experienced male partners. Danny benefited from this and it looks like Nagy does as well. Their other options, well Parkman’s not a citizen, Howe has been very flukey with injuries and consistency for years now, Flores/Wang have fallen apart.

I’m not defending the decision, just trying to figure it out.
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Nagy isn't much more experienced or reliable than Howe - and Howe looks a lot better this fall than he did a year ago.
 
Karen-W said:
Nagy isn't much more experienced or reliable than Howe - and Howe looks a lot better this fall than he did a year ago.
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Based on the one performance I saw, yes. But they’ve had their share of withdrawals and blown chances too. 4th at Nats last year, 12th at Worlds year before (when all three US teams were lousy). Their best result was 2nd at 4Cs with no European pairs there, obviously.

I like them but in six years they haven’t risen to the top, despite EfiMit, Shin/Nagy and KOS being newer partnerships. If USFS now invests in a younger team with no citizenship issues in the hopes they’ll get better and more consistent, at least it’s defensible reasoning.
 
PRlady said:
Based on the one performance I saw, yes. But they’ve had their share of withdrawals and blown chances too. 4th at Nats last year, 12th at Worlds year before (when all three US teams were lousy). Their best result was 2nd at 4Cs with no European pairs there, obviously.

I like them but in six years they haven’t risen to the top, despite EfiMit, Shin/Nagy and KOS being newer partnerships. If USFS now invests in a younger team with no citizenship issues in the hopes they’ll get better and more consistent, at least it’s defensible reasoning.
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SkAm will be the FIFTH competition this fall for ShiNagy versus just three for ChanHowe. It's very blatant that they're trying to give ShiNagy as many chances as possible to produce a score that would justify putting them on the Olympic team, which is indefensible seeing that they have yet to come close to beating either of ChanHowe's scores from their first two competitions.

My biggest issue with this decision is that it is NOT based on anything but hopes & dreams. There are and will continue to be plenty of competition opportunities for a young team like ShiNagy in the next Olympic cycle. But, realistically, there is no way, based on what they've done so far this season, they should be in the mix for this year's Olympic spot. No way in hell would I ever take a chance on ShiNagy being the backup for KamO should one of them get injured ahead of the TE. The way they've fallen apart each and every time they've been under any sort of pressure would have me running for the hills at the idea of putting them in for the TE at the Olympics should it come to that.

There is a very clear separation between the top 4 teams (EfiMit, KamO, ChanHowe, McBark) and the next 3 teams (PlaFern, LiuBed & ShiNagy). As I mentioned in the US Men's thread, just for grins & giggles, I applied the 2022 selection criteria to this season and right now, ShiNagy aren't even in ANY of the 4 priority groups. I know it's not what the USFS is doing this season, but it IS illustrative of separation that exists between the top 4 and the rest of the US pairs teams. If this was the selection process being used this year, the USFS would probably be unable to play favorites behind the confidential walls of the International Committee's post-Nats Pairs FS meeting.

Group 1
Highest Priority		Group 2Group 3Group 4
Lowest Priority
CRITERIA
FOR 2026 US
CHAMPIONSHIPS		Placed in the top 3
AND		Placed in the top 5
AND		Placed in the top 3
OR		Placed in the top 5
OR
CRITERIA
FOR 2025
INTERNATIONAL
SCORES *		Consistently scored equal to Top 3 at 2025 Worlds
M – 278.19
W – 215.24
P – 210.47
D – 207.11

Consistently scored equal to Top 5 at 2025 Worlds
M – 272.52
W – 205.65
P – 199.76
D – 204.88

AND/OR
scored once equal to Top 3 at 2025 Worlds		Consistently scored equal to Top 10 at 2025 Worlds
M – 255.13
W – 194.16
P – 183.01
D – 190.50

AND/OR
scored once equal to Top 5 at 2025 Worlds		Consistently scored equal to Top 15 at 2025 Worlds
M – 233.31
W – 177.90
P – 170.81
D – 181.51

OR
Scored once equal to Top 10 at 2025 Worlds

Pairs
Group 3 -
Emily Chan/Spencer Howe (183.22 CS John Nicks; 193.70 CS Trialeti; NHK)
Alisa Efimova/Misha Mitrofanov (193.54 CS John Nicks; 193.79 CS Nebelhorn; NHK; Finlandia)
Ellie Kam/Danny O’Shea (176.32 CS Trialeti; 199.11 SCI; Finlandia)
Katie McBeath/Daniil Parkman (187.89 CS John Nicks; 183.81 CS Nebelhorn; 178.08 GPdF; 181.70 CoC; Warsaw)

Group 4 -
Chelsea Liu/Ryan Bedard (168.27 CS John Nicks; 179.87 Tayside; IceChallenge)
Valentina Plazas/Maximiliano Fernandez (167.25 CS Kinoshita; 179.18 Tayside; SkAm)

Others with International Assignments
Linzy Fitzpatrick/Keyton Bearinger (125.91 CS John Nicks; 152.87 Tayside)
Olivia Flores/Luke Wang (122.66 CS John Nicks; SkAm)
Reagan Moss/Jakub Galbavy (144.40 JGP Ankara; 155.70 John Nicks IPC Jr; 146.74 JGP Bangkok; IceChallenge)
Audrey Shin/Balazs Nagy (165.76 CS John Nicks; 158.66 Skate to Milano; 173.30 GPdF, IceChallenge, SkAm)
Naomi Williams/Lachlan Lewer (159.63 JGP Riga; 148.14 CS John Nicks; 146.20 JGP Gdansk; Warsaw)
 
Look, you care about this way more than I do so I’ll shut up. I do care, for some stupid reason, about the TE. All I can say about that is that if Alisa doesn’t magically get citizenship, the best we can do pair-wise is 6th behind Japan, Canada, Italy, Georgia and China. And we are just lucky that Germany and Hungary can’t play. So I’m not placing any hopes on our pairs at all no matter who goes of the teams with current citizenship.
 
PRlady said:
Look, you care about this way more than I do so I’ll shut up. I do care, for some stupid reason, about the TE. All I can say about that is that if Alisa doesn’t magically get citizenship, the best we can do pair-wise is 6th behind Japan, Canada, Italy, Georgia and China. And we are just lucky that Germany and Hungary can’t play. So I’m not placing any hopes on our pairs at all no matter who goes of the teams with current citizenship.
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I disagree - if only because we've had 3 TE competitions so far in the Olympics and no one expected KniFraz to finish 3rd in the SP 4 years ago - conventional wisdom was 5th or 6th - they beat both MiuKih and Moore-Towers/Marinaro. And absolutely NO one expected Maddie Schizas to finish 3rd in both the TE Women's SP and FS that year either. There are always strange results that happen in the TE that defy conventional wisdom.

Also, FWIW, the highest SP score from a US team thus far this season is ChanHowe's 71.17 at Trialeti - which, you're right, is the 6th highest after removing MiNiki - and it's higher than PavSvia by just over 1 point. EfiMit don't even have the 2nd highest SP SB of the US teams - that honor goes to McBark at CoC. Maybe we should be worrying about Daniil Parkman's citizenship instead of Alisa's... Or, you know, not going off of vibes and instead looking at the data.

 
Regardless of team events, nothing about this selection seems merit-based. Chan/Howe obviously deserved SA more. Their SBs aren’t even close.
 
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