Ryuichi Kihara looked crestfallen as he left the ice after the Olympic pairs short program Sunday, knowing his big mistake on a lift would be costly for him and his partner, Riku Miura.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s coach, Bruno Marcotte, quickly tried to temper Kihara\u2019s disappointment, which would increase when he heard the scores that put the reigning world champions in fifth place heading into Monday\u2019s free skate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not over,\u201d Marcotte insisted to Kihara, then repeated.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s not over.\u201d<\/p>\n
How right he was.<\/p>\n
And how different Kihara\u2019s emotions were when it was over, even if someone watching without knowing the context might have wondered why he was bawling, his face contorted by the tears of joy just a few hours after he had finished crying tears of distress.<\/p>\n
He, too, would repeat himself.\u00a0Kihara cried on the ice following a flawless and compellingly powerful free skate to music from \u201cGladiator,\u201d then cried again upon realizing that a world record free skate score of 158.13 had turned a seven-point deficit into a nearly 10-point triumph over Anastasia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia.<\/p>\n
It made them the first Japanese to win any Olympic pairs medal.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing here, we were extremely confident,\u201d Marcotte said.<\/p>\n
That confidence only grew when Miura and Kihara dominated both pairs programs in the team event, racking up a personal best score (82.84 and 155.54) in each, helping Japan win a silver medal, just as they had done at the 2022 Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
That belief flagged after Kihara bollixed the dismount of a lift, their third of seven elements in the short program.\u00a0It dropped them below second place in a short program for the first time in four seasons with their lowest score (73.11) in 12 competitions dating to November 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in despair,\u201d Kihara said.\u00a0\u201cI couldn\u2019t stop crying, even at practice this morning.\u00a0I didn\u2019t know how I was going to get myself up again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so grateful to Riku.\u00a0Normally, I\u2019m the stronger one.\u00a0This time around, Riku really supported me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryuichi Kihara looked crestfallen as he left the ice after the Olympic pairs short program Sunday, knowing his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[116084,212940,3471,219576,219400,219402,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-473535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-figure-skating","9":"tag-free-skate","10":"tag-japan","11":"tag-pairs","12":"tag-riku-miura","13":"tag-ryuichi-kihara","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}