For just a few short weeks, Timothy LeDuc and Ashley Cain-Gribble are back on home ice in Euless, preparing for the world championships while reflecting on and reliving their first Olympic games.
“With everything happening in the world, with everything that's happened in the last few years with the pandemic, having the opportunity to still pursue something that we love so much and to do it on the stage that we have worked to reach for so many years, we can't but help but be extremely grateful for the opportunity,” said Timothy LeDuc.
In Beijing, the pair finished eighth just days after Cain-Gribble injured her ankle.
“If anything, I felt like having the injury and overcoming it in the short program and having that really joyous, awesome moment only added to the experience. And in a way, it sort of was a microcosm of our entire partnership, having some kind of adversity thrown at us and still having to overcome,” said LeDuc.
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On their road to the Olympics, both skaters have become known for breaking barriers.
LeDuc made history as the first openly non-binary athlete to compete in the winter games.
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By their side, Cain-Gribble has defied norms too.
At 5’6,” she’s taller than most female pairs skaters, a fact that nearly forced her out of the sport years before.
“For us, the one thing that we’ve always tried to do is be true to ourselves and authentic to who we are at our core and be those people out on the ice,” said Cain-Gribble. “We know that there are people at home and in the arena watching and we just want to be able to be ourselves and say that everybody deserves to be in this space. Everybody and everybody. And yeah, we hope that we can be a beacon of hope for people just by being ourselves out there."
In two weeks, LeDuc and Cain-Gribble will leave for the world championships in France where China won’t compete and Russian athletes will be barred amid the crisis in Ukraine.
"It changes a lot. Because as Timothy said, going into these world championships, we are the top-ranked team in the whole competition, and that's exciting. It's not something that scares us. I feel, at the end of the day, we just have to go out and skate, do the one thing that we know what to do the most” said Cain-Gribble.
The world championships begin March 21 in the south of France.
