Olympics-Love, teamwork and sometimes rivalry intertwine at Winter Olympics

Feb 13 (Reuters) – Love is in the air at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics where a number of couples bring an added level of chemistry to the competition. Here are some of the couples competing with or against each other at the Games:

CURLING

Three couples competed in curling’s mixed doubles event that ended on Tuesday. They all walked away without a medal, with each pair losing five out of nine games in the round-robin stages.

* Norway’s Magnus Nedregotten and Kristin Skaslien, a couple since 2011, won bronze at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018 and silver in Beijing in 2022. The pair, who have competed together since 2012, got married in 2019.

* Canada’s Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant have said the introduction of mixed doubles into Olympics was the spark that started their relationship as they paired up in 2016 after it was announced that the event would be included in Pyeongchang 2018. They have been married for four years.

* In their final game, the Canadians beat another couple — Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann who got married in 2022 and have competed internationally as a doubles pair since 2023. Their one-year-old son, River, was an avid spectator at the Games, where he grabbed a curling broom and swept along the sidelines.

FIGURE SKATING

* U.S. ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates won silver in the individual event on Wednesday and took home gold from the team competition, having placed first in both their programmes during that event. They have competed in every Olympics since Sochi 2014 but Milano Cortina was their first Games as a married couple. The couple live and train in Montreal and were married in Hawaii in June 2024.

* Competing in their fourth Olympics, Italian ice dancers Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri placed fourth on Wednesday and also contributed to Italy’s bronze medal in the team event. The Milan-based couple have competed together since 2010.

* Swedish ice dancers Milla Ruud Reijtan and Nikolaj Majorov placed 20th on Wednesday in their first Olympic appearance. The couple confirmed they were together in 2025, having skated together since 2023. They were the first Swedes to compete in ice dance at Olympic level.

* Georgia’s Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin, who previously competed for Russia, have been an ice dance team since 2018 and married since 2022. Davis, who was diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss as a child, is the daughter of famed skating coach Eteri Tutberidze. They finished in 13th place on Wednesday.

* American couple Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik placed fifth in Wednesday’s ice dance event, having skated together competitively since 2022. They became a couple that same year and Zingas, who is from Ukraine, became a U.S. citizen last year.

* Armenian national pairs champions Karina Akopova and Nikita Rakhmanin have been a couple since 2019. They began skating as a pair in Russia in 2021 before moving to compete for Armenia, where Akopova’s family is from, in 2025.

FREESTYLE SKIING

U.S. freestyle skiers Ashley Caldwell and Justin Schoenefeld may compete together in the sport’s mixed team aerials event on February 21, where three athletes from each team will showcase their aerial talents. The couple won gold in the same event in Beijing with fellow skier Chris Lillis. Caldwell and Schoenefeld were married on a mountain in Park City, Utah, in February 2025, in a ceremony officiated by Lillis.

ICE HOCKEY

Engaged couple Ronja Savolainen, vice-captain of Finland, and Sweden captain Anna Kjellbin may face each other in the playoffs of the women’s Olympic ice hockey tournament. The two defenders are no strangers to on-ice clashes as they compete against each other in the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) in North America, where Kjellbin plays for the Toronto Sceptres and Savolainen for the Ottawa Charge. 

* Four-time Olympian Marie-Philip Poulin and two-time Olympic medallist Laura Stacey, are teammates on the PWHL’s Montreal Victoire and the Canadian national team. The couple have been together since 2017 and married in 2024. They were among the first players signed by Montreal after the league’s creation in 2023.

SKELETON

* Belgium’s Kim Meylemans and Brazil’s Nicole Silveira have been competing against each other in women’s skeleton since 2019 and confirmed their relationship in 2021. They postponed plans for a beach wedding until after the Olympics but were married in a civil ceremony in August 2025. Women’s skeleton heats were starting on Friday, with the medals being decided on Saturday.

(Reporting by Bernadette Hogg in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Clare Fallon)