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The Americans defend their gold medal, the beaming smiles both wore on their faces were rooted in a whole lot of pain.
“I don’t really have the words as it’s supposed to be just another competition,” Kam said, “but it’s so much more than that.”
“It means everything,” O’Shea said.”It’s so amazing. It’s those moments that you’ve dreamed of since you were a little kid.”
O’Shea and Kim, who will compete in the individual event starting Sunday night, are perhaps an unlikely pairing.
O’Shea, who turned 35 earlier in the Olympics, is at a point in his life at which most skaters have retired.He played football, soccer and basketball while growing up, which is not exactly common for figure skaters, and even ran track and practiced karate.
It was always figure skating that captured his imagination, though. O’Shea remembers watching the Olympics when he was not yet 10 years old, and the dream of skating under those lights and amid that pressure took root and never let go.
“I wrote out all the years the Olympics would be. ‘Oh, it happens every four years, and in 2010, I’ll be 18 or whatever. That’s the one I’m going to go to,’” O’Shea told The Associated Press. “That did not happen. But I am if nothing else pretty stubborn and steadfast — two sides of the same coin. I’m determined and, you know, I believed in myself.”
He kept believing even when it didn’t happen for the Sochi Games in 2014,or the Pyeongchang Games in 2018,which might have been the most difficult to swallow. O’Shea and his than-partner Tarah Kayne were the first alternates, and because the U.S. only qualified one spot,they spent the month in South Korea just in case something happened to the American team.
Alexa Knierim and her husband, Chris Knierim, wound up competing as planned. O’Shea and Kayne did not.
“To be so close and not make it, it was devastating, right?” O’Shea said. “They don’t usually send alternates, but with only one pair, they wanted me to stay in Asia after Four Continents and be close by. it was one of the coolest, hardest moments of my life.”
Kayne eventually left the sport amid allegations of misconduct related to their former coach, Dalilah Sappenfield, who subsequently was banned by the United States Center for SafeSport for physical and emotional abuse, among other charges.
O’Shea spent a season skating with Chelsea liu before teaming up with Kam for the 2022-23 season.
The 21-year-old Kam, who was born at Yakota Air Base in Japan, and O’Shea quickly became the top U.S. pairs team. They have never been off the podium in four trips to nationals,winning the title in 2023 and the silver medal last month in St. Louis.
The duo were fifth in the short program, edging reigning Olympic champions Sui Wenjing and Han Cong and helping the U.S. build a lead going into the free skate. There, they finished fourth ahead of Canada’s Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud, giving them an extra point that ended up being the margin of victory for the Americans against silver medalist Japan.
“It’s what you worked your entire life for,both of us,since we were 4 years old,” O’Shea said. “You put every ounce of spare time — every time you coudl have gone and hang out with friends or had, I don’t know, normal moments, right? Rather, you’re back putting in the time on the ice. The sacrifices from our family but also from us, it just all goes into making this happen.”