A PROMISING pair making their Olympic début will take home a diploma from Peking – the first time Spain has ever left the Games with an award in ice-dancing.
And curiously, one half of the 'dream team' is not Spanish, and has never even lived in Spain.
Olivia Smart and Adrià Díaz earn Spain's first-ever Winter Olympic diploma in ice-dancing (photo: Twitter)
Olivia Smart hails from Sheffield, UK, and now lives in Montréal, Canada, as does Adrià Díaz, her dance partner, who is Barcelona-born and raised.
Multi-national duos are common in figure-skating and ice-dancing, but a couple can only represent one country at the Winter Olympics, meaning they have to decide between them which one they will fly the flag for.
Adrià Díaz, who was partnered with Spanish-born Sara Hurtado for many years and with great success, is competing in his second Olympics – after Sochi 2014 – and his first with Olivia who, at nearly 25, is a newcomer to the Games.
She decided to apply to become a Spanish citizen via 'sports nationality', which was granted to her in 2017, after she and Adrià chose Spain as their country to represent at Peking 2022.
The pair performed in Peking to the soundtrack of Norman Foster's 1950s' western TV show Zorro, and achieved Spain's best result in Winter Olympic ice-dancing to date: Adrià and Sara finished 13th in Sochi, the first Spanish duo to qualify for the Games, and Sara and her newly-nationalised Russian-born partner Kirill Jalyavin ended 11th in Pyeongchang 2018.
Olivia and Adrià fell just short of the 200-point barrier – on 199.11 – putting them in eighth place after the rhythmic ice-dancing on Saturday and the freestyle on Monday.
Olympic diplomas are awarded from fourth to eighth place, meaning they just managed to break into the prizewinning category.
Both said they felt 'very comfortable' once on the ice and that they had thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
France's Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, four-times World Champions and silver medallists at Pyeongchang 2018, were awarded 136.15 points in the freestyle, giving them an overall total of 226.98 – and the gold.
Defending World Champions Viktoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, from Russia, were the favourites to get the gold medal with their elegant routine to Rachmaninov, but Sinitsina slipped during the final leg, losing them points – although with an accumulated total of 220.51, they still took the silver.
The bronze went to the USA's Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue, with 218.02 points.
Also so far this week, Javi Lliso and Thibault Magnin competed in Slopestyle skiing, but failed to make the final due tomorrow (Wednesday).
A fall pushed Thibault down to 29th, with a total of 33.06 points, whilst Javi, who earned a sixth-place diploma in Big Air at what is his first Winter Olympics, very narrowly missed qualifying for the final.
He finished on 69.19, after a polished and near-perfect second performance but a fall in the first leg, leaving him in 14th position – but only the top 12 go through to the last leg of the competition and the chance of winning a medal.
Javi and Thibault have now wrapped up their début Games and are set to return home to Spain.
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