Say hello to Miriam Ziegler and Severin Kiefer, Austria’s figure skating champs
We know, we know, we’re supposed to be rooting for the U.S. in the 2018 Winter Olympics. And we totally are. But we’re also rooting (just a tiny bit) for Austrian couples figure skaters Miriam Ziegler and Severin Kiefer, because they’re too graceful and fiercely talented not to.
The skaters paired up just five years ago in 2013, which is hard to believe after watching them skate together. Kiefer had competed in couples skating for years before with partner Stina Martini, but Ziegler had only ever competed solo.
“I took a step back from skating for a couple of months and then slowly started to train again, but the fun never came back and I seemed to have lost the light-hearted approach to my skating,” she’s said of her decision to abandon solo skating in an interview with the SkateGuard1 blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeMBcdDKutk?feature=oembed
"After a couple of tryouts, I knew that pair skating was what I had been looking for," she continued. "I loved having someone else on the ice with me. Learning the pair elements was not easy and I enjoyed being challenged. Pair skating was the only thing that could have convinced me to come back to skating."
Fortunately, they’re pretty good at it. Ziegler and Kiefer are five-time Austrian champions, and they took 17th place in the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. (They seem to like each other off the rink just a ~little~ bit, too).
"Miriam and I spend close to twenty four hours a day together and quite honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way," Kiefer told the same blog.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVsfoH9DN0-
We can’t wait to watch Miriam and Severin compete together! Find all of the Olympic figure skating viewing times here.
