2025-26 U.S. Ice Dance News, Updates & Discussion - Backstreet Boys & Spice Girls

[princeton123]

Thinking you can mount a comeback in an Olympic year when you haven't skated competitively in seven years and be taken seriously is either very misguided or very arrogant. Probably both

 

[Willin]

Listen, you're defending a team that hasn't shown up yet. A team that hasn't competed in 7.5 years. Maybe they'll be on the Trialeti Trophy entries next week and if they are, great. But if they aren't... Well, I call as much bullshit on this "comeback" as I'll call bullshit on Sui/Han's "comeback" - that's another team (in a different discipline) that hasn't shown up at anything yet.

To be fair to Sui/Han in this - Sui did want to come back with another partner. Chinese fed told her no, she could only come back if Han came back. So they tried and Han is indeed too injured to compete. So the circumstances of their comeback is completely different.

As far as the ShibSibs, I still don't get the "why" of this comeback. It's probably not entirely for the media attention like I thought initially given they're not posting on social media - although given their endorsement deal and the media attention there may be a component of that.

But this adds to the question of "why":

Thinking you can mount a comeback in an Olympic year when you haven't skated competitively in seven years and be taken seriously is either very misguided or very arrogant. Probably both

Not even not skated competitively - only skated in limited shows and given limited seminars (which I've seen 70+ year old coaches teach seminars, so that's not a sign you're training). It's not like some of the '90s or '00s comebacks where people had been on the pro circuit for years and were just training and competing in a less strenuous manner. We have no idea if they even skated at all for a good chunk of that. Add to that that the rules have changed - and not in any favorable manner to the ShibSibs - and it just seems very misguided.

Unless the why is not going to the Olympics. I think people (including myself) would take this better if the "why" didn't seem so explicitly Olympics or get back to prior form - like wanting to skate in shows and using competitions for promo or just try to get back in shape for fun. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get back into a hobby. Midori Ito's still at it competitively, but many former competitive skaters do shows well into their 50s.

 

[ice coverage]

FWIW, Zingas/Kolesnik have been added to the "National Team" listings on the USFS Leave Your Mark 2026 site (which has had some format changes, BTW).
I happened to notice this update just today (after not looking at the site for many weeks), and I guess their inclusion is better late than never.

Z/K now appear as the seventh dance partnership, along with the original six.
(Listings for the other disciplines are unchanged.)

National Team | Leaveyourmark2026

www.leaveyourmark2026.com

 

[tangerine dream]

As far as the ShibSibs, I still don't get the "why" of this comeback. It's probably not entirely for the media attention like I thought initially given they're not posting on social media - although given their endorsement deal and the media attention there may be a component of that.

My guess as to why the Shibs decided to come back:

It would be hard not to notice that the level of dance is not as high as it was when the Shibs were competing. They were up against V/M & D/W at the beginning of their career and then P/C entered the mix. They won three world medals and two olympic medals, none of them gold. I imagine they may have seen C/B winning worlds the last three years and thought, hey we were consistently beating them when we competed and they are older than us. Perhaps they thought it was possible for them to win Olympics or Worlds or maybe even an Olympic Team Gold with the absence of Russia.

Idk, just a guess.

 

[Karen-W]

Trialeti Trophy entries are out and there is NO US ice dance team assigned.

Can the Shibs really be thinking of starting their season at NHK? That seems like absolute madness.

 

[litenkyckling]

Trialeti Trophy entries are out and there is NO US ice dance team assigned.

Can the Shibs really be thinking of starting their season at NHK? That seems like absolute madness.

This absolutely seems misguided. In 2021 almost every top team did a challenger or senior b (remember the stacked field of Finlandia?) and I think that was in part to get some more competitions in after such a lack of them in the previous year. To enter Olympic season with no competition since February 2018 and no world standings points is wild - no matter who you are or your previous achievements.