MILAN, Italy — Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara delivered a record-shattering free skate Monday to rally from fifth place and win Japan’s first Olympic gold medal in pairs figure skating at the Milano Cortina Games. The Miura Kihara duo posted a world-record 158.13 in the free skate and finished with 231.24 points overall, Feb. 16, 2026.
The Olympic title capped a comeback that looked unlikely 24 hours earlier, when a lift mistake in the short program dropped Miura and Kihara to fifth and left them nearly seven points behind the leaders. Their rebound — powered by clean side-by-side jumps, big throws and steadier lifts — rewrote the order on the final night of pairs at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.
Miura Kihara turn a short-program error into a world-record free skate
The winning total came from a free skate that pushed the sport’s marks under a judging scale revamped after the 2018 Olympics. A Reuters recap of the pairs final noted that coach Bruno Marcotte’s message after the short program was simple: “It’s not over.”
It wasn’t. Miura and Kihara attacked their “Gladiator” program — set to music performed by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli — with the urgency of a team that had no margin left. When their score finally flashed, the Japanese pair had climbed to the top with 231.24 points, leaving the remaining teams skating for silver and bronze.
Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava earned silver with 221.75 points — the country’s first Winter Olympics medal — while Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin took bronze with 219.09 after leading the short program. The official ISU results show them winning the free skate after ranking fifth in the short program.
Miura Kihara’s tears, trust and the reset that followed
Kihara said the short-program mistake stayed with him into the next day. In a separate Reuters report, he said, “I couldn’t stop crying,” describing how messages from friends, coaches and supporters helped steady him for the free skate.
Miura said she felt she had to “be strong” when she saw her partner struggling, then the pair agreed to “start from scratch.” Their free skate — a program built around combat and survival — became the kind of performance pairs teams chase for years: fast across the ice, tight in unison and clean on the big elements.
The road to gold has been uneven. Kihara has battled recurring back injuries, and Miura has competed with a shoulder that can dislocate — including an episode at the 2025 Japan Championships when she reset it herself before skating.
An International Skating Union recap called the free skate “history in the making” and emphasized how Miura Kihara surged from fifth to gold. A deeper NBC Olympics breakdown also detailed how the mistake in the short program sharpened their approach, turning pressure into a record-setting response.
Scores that decided the podium
- Gold: Miura Kihara (Japan), 231.24 total; 158.13 free skate
- Silver: Metelkina/Berulava (Georgia), 221.75
- Bronze: Hase/Volodin (Germany), 219.09
The margin mattered, too. Japan won by 9.49 points — a gap large enough to leave little doubt after the final group finished, yet earned through a single night of near-perfect execution.
How Miura Kihara built toward Japan’s Olympic breakthrough
For Japan, the gold was more than a one-night peak. The partnership, formed in 2019 and based in Ontario, Canada, has steadily moved the country into a discipline long dominated by European and North American teams.
In 2023, Miura and Kihara won Japan’s first pairs world title, a step that signaled the ceiling was rising for Japanese pairs skating, as NBC Sports reported at the time. Two years later, they reclaimed the world championship in Boston, an achievement that underlined their staying power through injuries and uneven seasons, according to another NBC Sports recap.
That arc continued into this Olympic season. In December, Miura Kihara won the Grand Prix Final pairs title in front of a home crowd in Nagoya, an important confidence boost heading into Milano Cortina, as Reuters reported.
On Monday, Miura Kihara made the biggest statement yet — not just with the record number beside their name, but with the kind of response that turns a mistake into a milestone. For Japanese pairs skating, it was a first Olympic gold and first Olympic medal in the discipline.
