James and Cipres are the Olympics pairs figure skating Cinderella story to root for
Please join us in stanning French pairs figure skaters Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres.
One of the great pleasures of any Olympics is the introduction of endearing and supremely easy to root for athletes in sports you don’t otherwise watch. For most of these athletes, the Olympics represent the ultimate goal and their medal pursuits are the culmination of years of, if not lifelong, work.
Today, we’d like to pitch you one such rooting interest in particular: the French figure skating pairs team of Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres.
Yes, they are French, but don’t let that dissuade you. Team USA only has one duo competing in the pairs competition (Chris Knierim and Alexa Scimeca Knierim), so there’s room for you to embrace a backup team. Also, France is a fairly innocuous country from which to adopt athletes. They’re not archrivals in the sport or on the medal board, like, say, Russia or China or Canada. Just let it happen.
The case for Team James-Cipres begins with Vanessa James.
She’s a naturalized French citizen, by way of Canada (where she was born), Bermuda (where she lived until she was 10), Virginia (where she lived from 1997 until 2008 on a permanent residence card and learned to skate) and Great Britain (where she has citizenship from her father’s side and where she first competed internationally as a single skater). See we told you that French thing was no big deal.
In 2006, James was the first British figure skating champion of black African descent. A few laters, France fast-tracked her naturalization so that she could compete in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics after she won the French national title with partner Yannick Bonheur. (James and Bonheur would go on to place 14 at the Olympics, making history as the first black pair to compete at that level, but ended their partnership a few months later.)
After she and Bonheur parted ways, James needed a new partner.
Enter Morgan Cipres. He’s French. He’s goofy. He previously skated individually and, while three years her junior, says he can’t imagine skating pairs with anyone but Vanessa. (More on that later.)
In English-language interviews, James is full of energy and enthusiasm. In French-language interviews, she speaks French the way Cipres speaks English, which is to say endearingly broken but proficient enough. Their Instagrams are full of stylish globe-trotting shots and occasional thirst traps.
They are adorable.
James and Cipres are on a remarkably fun feel-good run that, if the stars align, could end in a place on the podium. Because that’s the important thing: They are great skaters. Which is crucial at, you know, the Olympics.
The first four seasons James and Cipres skated together, they were pretty consistently okay. While they regularly won the French championship, they plateaued just off the podium in European and international competition. Then, after the 2015-16 season, in the midst of considering calling it quits, they decided instead to overhaul their whole team and move to Florida.
Florida, because that’s where John Zimmerman lives. Zimmerman is a three-time U.S. pairs champion and one half of a 2002 World bronze medalist team whose skating James admired for its strength and innovative lifts and transitions. He made the French duo is his number one priority.
“[Zimmerman and partner Kyoko Ina] were athletic and did crazy lifts and crazy elements,” James told a skating blog. “I felt like we look like them and we just needed a little bit more help to bring it out. It’s working really well.”
Zimmerman — a self-described expert in tricks — worked with two-time European bronze medal-winning ice dancer John Kerr — an expert in intricate steps and holds — to create programs to “Earned It” by The Weeknd and “Sound of Silence” by Disturbed, leading to a banner season in which the pair improved drastically in their personal bests and began to place for the first time, including bronze at the 2017 European Championship.
Under Zimmerman’s leadership, James and Cipres transitioned from two single skaters performing together to a pairs team, working on their confidence and their relationship on and off the ice. By their own description, they just grew up.
After missing the podium at 2018 European Championships in January — the last major competition before Pyeongchang — by one-hundredth of a point, the pair remains in the Olympic medal conversation. Currently ranked 7 in the world, they stand admittedly a better shot than the U.S. pairs team, ranked 14. And they have, at various times, placed ahead of all their biggest competition from favorites Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov to two-time World champs Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford and World silver medalists Aljona Savechenko and Bruno Massot of Germany.
Or as James told the AP Newswire:
"We’ve beaten the Russians in the short, we’ve beaten the Germans in the long. We’ve beaten everyone a little bit, differently, at different times. Now we just have to get it all together at one point."
So, yes, James and Cipres are good — they’re good after making an amazing, made-for-movies leap. And they’re entertaining! They’re exciting. They’re thoroughly modern. Their skating is athletic and highly choreographed. They choose notably contemporary music — their 2017-18 program features Ed Sheeran (“Make it Rain”) and “Say Anything” by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera — designed to resonate emotionally with audiences.
All of which forms a program that wins over crowds and draws standing ovations regardless of point totals, a program that even their competition can’t help but admire. Everyone is excited about James and Cipres. They are the pairs figure skating bandwagon you want to be on.
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There is also an element of catching lightning in a bottle with this Olympic appearance. At 30, James isn’t likely to compete in another Winter Olympics and the pair has stated they may only skate together for one more season anyway. Cipres has little interest in skating with anyone else.
If James and Cipres win a medal, it will be against the odds and over either the Russians, Chinese or Canadians. It’d be an unbelievable end to a quintessentially Olympic Cinderella story.