It wasn’t a stumble or slip that has cost the United States’ top pairs figure skating team a trip to the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, Italy – it was some paperwork.
A delayed passport will keep Alisa Efimova from competing alongside partner and husband Misha Mitrofanov in next month’s Games.
The pair, who won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last weekend to qualify for the 2026 Olympics, have been ruled ineligible because Efimova is yet to become an official American citizen.
“Yes, we didn’t make it, but we don’t see that as a failure,” Mitrofanov said Wednesday at a send-off event for Max Naumov and the pair of Emily Chan and Spencer Howe.
“Hey, this was an opportunity,” Mitrofanov said. “It may not have worked out. But so many great things have come from it that we are very happy moving forward.”
What is Efimova’s background?
While Mitrofanov is a U.S. citizen by birth, Efimova was born in Finland while also having represented Russia and Germany in international competition in the past.
She moved to the U.S. in 2023 after partnering up with Mitrofanov, receiving a green card that year. However, there is a three-year waiting period for citizenship.
“Whenever we first started as a team, we didn’t know whether or not the Olympics is even a possibility. We knew it was a long shot because of the paperwork,” Mitrofanov said. “The more we progressed with our skating career, the closer we got to that opportunity.
“There were so many people who messaged us and reached out to us wanting to support us. So, for us, we’re very grateful.”
Their home rink, the Skating Club of Boston, worked with government officials in an attempt to speed up the process, but what Mitrofanov called a potential “last-minute miracle” failed to materialize.
U.S. Figure Skating CEO Matt Farrell said that “there are sometimes rules … and this is not the fun part.”
What’s next for the pair?
Instead of heading to Italy, Efimova and Mitrofanov will instead compete in Beijing at next week’s Four Continents – with a field made up mostly of non-Olympians.
The rules governing the International Skating Union are different from the International Olympic Committee.
As for the couple’s Olympic ambitions, there’s a chance that they could compete at the 2030 Games in the French Alps. However, Efimova will be 30 and Mitrofanov will be 32 at that point.
“We’re thinking about it,” Efimova said. “Four years is a very long time. For now, I think we’re just thinking of how to approach the next season, because this situation, and after these nationals, it left us with some kind of hunger to make it.
“(If) we make it in four years to the Olympics, I think it would be even more valuable, even more precious. So that’s definitely a motivation.”