The ice dancing duo known as the “Shib Sibs” claimed the bronze medal Tuesday morning in PyeongChang at the 2018 Winter Olympics ice dancing competition.
Maia and older brother Alex Shibutani become the first American team to double medal in PyeongChang. They also won a bronze medal in the team event earlier in the games.
Coming into the competition Tuesday, they were in fourth place. The Shibutanis overcame a 0.02-point deficit to capture the bronze. They received a 114.86 free dance score, which gave them a total of 192.59 — a big victory over fellow Team USA ice dancers Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, who ended the night with a final score of 187.69 and fourth place. The third U.S. team in the field, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, finished ninth after an ice dance fall. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada held onto their first place lead from the short dance and won gold, while France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron earned silver.
The Shibutanis became the first U.S. siblings to win an Olympic ice dance medal. The only other occurrence of siblings winning ice dance medals together happened in 1992, when France’s Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay claimed silver.
After the medal-winning performance, she tweeted that the pair “just had the best skate of our lives!!!”
And according to TeamUSA.org, the Shibutanis were the first ice dancers of Asian descent to win medals at an Olympics via the team event.
Outside of the ice skating rink, the two have also gained popularity on social media, especially on YouTube. Their “ShibSibs” channel, featuring vlogs from their travels, has more than 95,000 subscribers. They have also been documenting their 2018 Olympics journey through their active Twitter and Instagram accounts.