"There's a saying in Russian: The last thing to die is hope," Misha Mitrofanov, one half of the reigning U.S. Championships pairs team, explained on a call with SKATING magazine. "As long as we just have hope, that's all we can do."

Mitrofanov and his skating partner, Alisa Efimova, await next week's 2026 U.S. Championships in St. Louis as well as a ruling on Efimova's American citizenship. Without her citizenship secured, the pair will miss out on being eligible for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan in February.

Their much-anticipated week looks like this:

• Wednesday, Jan. 7: pairs short program
• Friday, Jan. 9: pairs free skate
• Sunday, Jan. 11 beginning at 2 p.m. ET: U.S. Figure Skating will name the Olympic team in a televised ceremony on NBC.
   

Efimova, a Finnish citizen, obtained her green card approval on July 27, 2024. They trained through the uncertainty. 

Since they teamed up, the pair has landed on the U.S. Championships podium twice (silver in 2024, gold in 2025) and placed sixth at the 2025 World Championships. Despite the relatively short resume, the results, the team said, speak for themselves. Progress is how they define success.

"When you give a performance where you did everything that was planned and then together with the technical and the artistic side, when you first of all see the reaction of your partner and then you see the reaction of the crowd, and then you see the reaction when you come to your coach, it's something you can just feel," Efimova said during the same interview. "The joy and these little moments, I think they also define the feeling of success."

Their on-ice connection was noted immediately by coach Olga Ganicheva, who compared the team to herself and fellow coach and husband, Aleksey Letov.

"The moment we saw Alisa, and talked to her, we knew," Ganicheva said. "You know how it feels the moment you see the person that's your person? The feeling was mutual in five minutes, believe it or not. … Now they skate like the same person, like one person."

It was their connection that inspired Ganicheva's idea to have the pair perform their free skate to "Where Do I Begin (Love Story)" by Gary Valenciano this season and tell the story of legendary — yet tragic — Russian pairs skaters and two-time Olympic gold medalists Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov.

Gordeeva, a longtime friend, visited the rink at Ganicheva's request to talk to Efimova and Mitrofanov about skating a program like this.

"It was an eye-opening experience for me," Efimova, who has been compared to Gordeeva, said. "I concluded that she is skating as whispering. With this whisper, she gets an immense power. It's like you can say something very quietly, but it can have a big impact. This was the same thing, but in skating. I think that is a gift. I'm carrying that thought in my head all the time, especially when we skate the free skate."

By softening their movements, Gordeeva brought out even more of the qualities that will further the comparisons from one team to the other.

"Gordeeva helped us soften the program in terms of movements, but also not letting us hinder with speed," Mitrofanov said. "She wasn't trying to hold us back in terms of pushing throughout the program; however, she really helped us with her movements and giving us a guide in what she would do with Sergei."

Their on-ice connection fueled their connection off the ice, which these days cycles back into their on-ice connection, Mitrofanov said.

"That plays a big role in how we look toward each other, how we treat each other," he said. "[It's] the passion that we have for each other, and for the sport."

Likewise, Efimova said having a rock by her side through nerve-wracking competitive moments has been "priceless."

Their goal throughout their partnership is to bring short movies to the ice, where people sit and focus on their programs for three minutes at a time, Mitrofanov said.

"We're not just trying to do athletics," he said. "We're not trying to do just the sport of figure skating; we also really wanted to lean into the creativity and artistry of figure skating."

The feedback they've received on this year's programs, including their short to "Cloak and Dagger" by Eternal Eclipse, reinforced that they are on the right track with this approach.

Though they speak English in their lives outside of skating, at the rink and at home they speak Russian to each other. Efimova — who speaks six languages — noted that if something is particularly nuanced, she will switch to English.

 "We definitely feel like it's a part of us," Mitrofanov said. "Both of our families have Russian heritage and we want to keep that going."

It's just one more note of comparison the couple has to Gordeeva and Grinkov.

But after Milan, the newly minted American team could join them by earning as many as two Olympic golds (in the team event and pairs event).

Who knows?

After all, the last thing to die is hope.