With the top five pairs from last month’s Winter Olympics missing from the world figure skating championships, Americans Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier leaped into the void with the performance of their careers, becoming the first U.S. pair to win a world championship since Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1979.
As if the circumstances at the worlds in Montpellier, France, were not unusual enough already, Knierim and Frazier’s long program was delayed for several minutes when their U.S. teammate Ashley Cain-Gribble, skating with partner Timothy LeDuc, fell three times in the first two minutes of their program.