Ellie Kam, Danny O'Shea chase historic pairs medal

Scott M. Reid, The Orange County Register on Feb 16, 2026

Published in Olympics

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MILAN — When American pairs skater Danny O’Shea was 10 years old, he sat down and made a list of the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.

In 2010, he would be 18. That would be his Olympics, he decided.

As easy as that, right?

O’Shea has survived two retirements, five partner changes, two coaching changes, a broken foot, multiple surgeries, an eating disorder and a generation gap, before at 35 he made his Olympic debut at the Milano Cortina Games with Ellie Kam.

Still, O’Shea considers it all worth the wait.

O’Shea, now the oldest skater to make their Olympic debut since 1948 and the oldest Team USA Olympic pairs skater since 1932, and Kam have already picked up a gold medal in the team competition and are now in contention to become the first U.S. pairs team to medal at the Olympic Games in nearly 40 years.

Kam, 21, and O’Shea finished seventh in the Olympic pairs short program Sunday night with 71.87 points, placing them less than three points behind Canada’s Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud in third place (74.60) going into Monday’s free skate.

Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin lead the competition with 80.01 points, followed by Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava (75.46).

Team USA’s other pairs, Emily Chan and Spencer Howe, are ninth at 70.06.

O’Shea’s original Olympic projection proved a little too ambitious. He didn’t make his U.S. Figure Skating Championships debut until 2013, placing seventh with Tarah Kayne.

They earned a silver medal at Four Continents a season later.

Kayne and O’Shea upset Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim to win the 2016 U.S. Championships. They were forced to withdraw from the 2017 U.S. Championships when Kayne hit her head during the short program and suffered a concussion.

They finished second at the 2018 U.S. Championships and were named alternates to the Olympic team, but never made it to the Olympic ice. Later that season, O’Shea and Kayne became the first American pairs team to win at Four Continents in more than a decade.

But shortly before the World Championships that year, Kayne was diagnosed with a stress fracture in her right knee, and the team was forced to pull out of Worlds.

The pair reclaimed the U.S. title in 2019, but in December 2020, the team split with Kayne announcing she was retiring. She later said she left the sport due to the alleged repeated harassment and abuse she suffered from their coach, Dalilah Sappenfield.

Sappenfield was permanently banned by the United States Center for SafeSport in May 2024 for physical and emotional misconduct, retaliation, abuse of process and failure to report a potential SafeSport violation.

O’Shea teamed up with Chelsea Liu over the summer of 2021. It was a short-lived partnership. An on-ice accident at the 2021 CS Warsaw Cup left them both concussed, and they were forced withdraw from the 2022 U.S. Championships.

The partnership ended shortly thereafter.

O’Shea retired and took a job selling real estate, doing a little coaching on the side in Colorado Springs, Colo., when he met Kam.

In their first season together, the team qualified for the 2023 World Championships, where they finished 12th. They won their first U.S. title together in 2024 and then picked up a pair of Grand Prix event medals early in the 2024-25 season.

Competing at the World Championships that season, O’Shea broke his foot. The team finished seventh.

But in the off-season, O’Shea underwent foot surgery that required two plates and 11 screws to repair the damage. Kam missed about a month of training due to a concussion.

In the Milano Cortina team short program, they edged reigning Olympic champions Sui Wenjing and Han Cong. Their fourth-place finish in the free skate segment of the team competition proved to be the difference between gold and silver in Team USA’s one-point victory over Japan.

And now the pair are within reach of a second medal.

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