Sui Wenjing and Han Cong are set to return to pairs’ figure skating competition next season for the first time since winning the 2022 Olympic title on home ice in Beijing.
Sui, 29, and Han, 32, are entered in Grand Prix Series events in China in October and Japan in November.
Their return could also help China earn an Olympic spot in pairs’ for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games.
China had no pairs’ teams at this past March’s World Championships, so the nation so far has not qualified any 2026 Olympic pairs’ spots.
China can qualify a maximum of one pairs’ spot at the last qualifier in September in Beijing, where three total pairs’ spots are available. Entries have not been announced.
Han announced his retirement in August 2023 and has been a member of the International Skating Union’s singles and pairs’ skating technical committee.
Sui has worked as a choreographer for Chinese pairs since the 2022 Beijing Games.
Sui and Han also won Olympic silver in 2018 and world titles in 2017 and 2019 among five total world championships medals.
The last pairs’ team to repeat as Olympic champion was Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev for the Soviet Union in 1976 and 1980.
None of the other top seven pairs from the 2022 Olympics are currently competing together internationally. That includes the Russian pairs who finished second, third and fourth behind Sui and Han in Beijing.
Russian skaters have been banned from international competition since shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine three years ago. While singles skaters from Russia have been cleared to compete as individual neutral athletes at the last Olympic qualifier in September, no pairs’ teams from Russia were cleared.
At last season’s World Championships, the pairs’ medalists were Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan, followed by Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany and Sara Conti and Niccolò Macii of Italy. As of last season, Volodin was in the process of obtaining German citizenship to become eligible for the Olympics.
