Sochi, Feb 9 (IANS) World Champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White helped the United States rise from fifth place to third at the figure skating team event at the Winter Olympics here after the ice short dance.
The 2010 Vancouver Olympic silver medallists Davis and White performed flawlessly to score 75.98 points Saturday, just 1.68 short of their seasonal best. Reigning Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada trailed at 72.98 points while Russia’s Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev, bronze medallists at the 2013 World Championships, came in third with 70.27 points, reports Xinhua.
“We’re really excited to be back in the hunt for a medal. Charlie and I were definitely focused on our performance today. Now that we’re done, it’s nice to see the US back in top there. This is the Olympics. We want to execute everything perfectly in both the team and the individual event. We’ve been working hard all season,” said Davis.
In the team event standings after the ice short dance competition, Russia topped the table as the hosts aim at winning their first gold in figure skating here.
“We didn’t want to let the team down. We knew after seeing our Zhenya (Evgeni Plushenko) the day before yesterday, that we had to try getting out there on the ice. We knew there would be no silence, just huge support and that was very important for us,” said Soloviev.