Milano Cortina 2026: Miura and Kihara Eager to Add Their Names to Japan’s Olympic Roll of Honour

Reuters

11:04 JST, February 14, 2026

MILAN, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Japanese figure skaters have been conquering Olympic events over the last two decades and following the successes of Shizuka Arakawa in the women’s and Yuzuru Hanyu in the men’s, Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara will be hoping to make a golden impact in the pairs at the Milano Cortina Olympics.

When Italy last hosted the Winter Games in 2006, Arakawa struck gold in Turin to finally earn the Asian nation their first ever Olympic title in the sport before the ever-popular Hanyu mined more gold in the men’s event in 2014 and 2018.

Now two-time world champions Miura and Kihara will be eager to add their names to Japan’s Olympic roll of honour by keeping the chasing pack at bay when the pairs competition begins on Sunday with the short programme.

In a closely‑packed field, Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava, German duo Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin, Canadians Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps and Italian home favourites Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii are expected to be in hot pursuit of the Japanese skaters.

Miura and Kihara topped the pairs competition in the team event to help Japan capture silver earlier in the Games.

And while Miura has been troubled by a recurring dislocated shoulder, Kihara suffered from a back injury in 2023 that sidelined the pair from the Grand Prix circuit that year.

The duo, who have been partners for seven years, said their injuries are finally a thing of the past.

“A lot of things didn’t go our way the last four years including injuries,” Miura told Olympics.com. “But we got through it all and that’s what made us stronger in mind and body.”

Miura and Kihara are competing at their second Olympics, and cemented their status as the team to beat after winning the Grand Prix Final in Nagoya in December, where they edged Italy’s Conti and Macii, with Fabienne Hase and Volodin finishing third.

“The Grand Prix Final was a mini-Olympics,” Conti said.

Metelkina and Berulava were fourth at the final, followed by Hungary’s Maria Pavlova and Alexei Sviatchenko, and Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps.

Metelkina and Berulava, who dominated the recent European championships, finished runners-up to the Japanese in the Olympic team event to underline their status as medal contenders, while the Italians, buoyed by the home crowd, were third.

Stellato‑Dudek had high hopes of becoming figure skating’s oldest Olympic female gold medallist, but the 42-year-old hit her head in training on January 30, forcing the duo out of the team event before medical evaluations cleared her for the pairs.

Her remarkable comeback after 16 years away from the sport saw her become the sport’s oldest female world champion when she and Deschamps won gold in 2024.

She is the oldest figure skater to compete at the Olympics in nearly a century.

China’s reigning Olympic champions Sui Wenjing and Han Cong are writing a comeback story of their own, returning to the Olympic stage after a three-year hiatus.

They won bronze at the Cup of China in October, but remain well below their previous scoring levels and missed qualification for December’s Grand Prix Final.

“Every pair has their owns strengths. We are more intense; the Georgians are very precise and perform some spectacular elements. The Japanese just race ahead. We’ve been working on getting faster – but there is no catching them,” Italy’s Macii said.