Addison Native Alexa Scimeca-Knierim Wins Team Bronze Medal

GLEN ELLYN, IL — After a tough road to the Pyeongchang Olympics, Alexa Scimeca-Knierim, an Addison native, and Chris Knierim, her husband and skating partner, will take home a team bronze medal.

The pair has another shot at a medal when they skate in the couple's freestyle competition on Valentine's Day.

During Saturday's team event, the couple pulled off a stunning performance in the pairs' free skate, helping propel Team USA to the bronze medal. The pair faced some minor technical stumbles, but their impressive score of 126.56 put them fourth in pairs and placed the U.S. 3rd overall in team skating.

After the couple's skillful program on day two of figure skating, the rest of the Team U.S.A. skaters helped secure the bronze with their own riveting routines. Skater Mirai Nagasu made history by becoming the first U.S. female skater to nail the triple axel and Adam Rippon made an epic Olympic debut as well.

During Chris and Alexa Scimeca-Knierim's Olympic figure skating debut Thursday, there was an intricate art to their dance. The pair navigated difficult spins and glided across the ice in Pyeongchang, Alexa soaring high above Chris' head in their signature triple twist maneuver, sheer trust and skill propelling their tour de force performance to put them in fourth place with a score of 69.75.

The twists and turns the husband-and-wife skaters have dealt with off the ice — a life-threatening illness, injuries and the loss of loved ones— may be part of what makes them so seamless on the ice.

The pair qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics after they won gold with a breathtaking quadruple twist at the U.S. Figure Skating National Championships in January 2018. They're the first married skaters to take the ice at the Olympics since since Jenni Meno and Todd Sand competed in Nagano two decades ago.

Scimeca-Knierim, 26, who hails from Addison, met Chris Knierim in 2012 when they started performing as a duo. The pair had immediate chemistry, both on and off the ice. In 2013, they took home a silver medal at the U.S. Championships.

Just before the couple married in July 2016, they had overcome a broken leg that sidelined Chris in 2013 to end up becoming the first American team in nearly a decade to qualify for the Grand Prix final.

Then, after months of what the couple has referred to as vomiting episodes, Alexa was diagnosed with a potentially fatal gastrointestinal disorder. She underwent two surgeries in August 2016 and a third in November, but the healing incision on her stomach made training painful and difficult.

“Looking back, I think the hardest part for me was believing that I was ever going to be the athlete that I had been before,” Alexa told Team USA.

Scimeca-Knierim was in top form during Thursday's performance, seemingly light-years away from the woman who had been bedridden just a couple seasons before. At the end of their performance, the couple kissed and held each other tightly with the knowledge that the synergy of their dance goes far beyond the ice at Pyeongchang.

Alexa Scimeca-Knierim and Chris Knierim tackled the quad twist in the pair's free skate program on NBC Sports Network Saturday with a total score of 126.56 points.

See Scimeca-Knierim and Knierim pull off the challenging quadruple twist at the 2018 U.S. National Championships:

>>Lead Photo Credit: Associated Press, Bernat Armangue (AP)