Australian ice dance pair Holly Harris and Jason Chan have secured Australia's quota spot for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The pair finished second at the official "Skate to Milano" qualifying event in Beijing over the weekend.
It is the first quota spot that Australia has secured since Danielle O'Brien and Gregory Merriman for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
"I've been waiting for this my whole career, so I'm in disbelief." 22-year-old Harris said through tears on Chinese television.
"I'm just so happy.
"In the end of the program, I think we were just relieved to have done our best and for all the nerves and tension to wash away, because it was all done.
"The wait time was really nerve-racking because of the suspense music, you think the scores are coming and they just keep not arriving, so at that moment I was really nervous."
The pair have been competing together since 2019, although their fledgling partnership was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to that, Chan had competed for Canada between 2014 and 2018, winning gold at the novice level with then-partner Valérie Taillefer.
Despite the disruption to their career together, the pair narrowly missed out on a spot at the 2022 Games, qualifying as fourth reserve.
"Looking back to the qualifying event fours year ago, it feels crazy to see the evolution," Harris said.
"We weren't ready back then, we had to really grow as a team, find ourselves and put a lot of work to show that now we're ready, we want it."
"We are completely different team from where we were four years ago," Chan said,
"And also over these past four years, we started to understand each other even on a deeper level, so I think that just brought us closer."
The result ensures Harris and Chan join figure skating pair Anastasia Golubeva and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore in reaching the 2026 Games.
Golubeva and Giotopoulos Moore qualified by finishing ninth at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Boston in March, a competition where Harris and Chan missed out on qualification by just one spot.
The difference between ice dancing and pairs figure skating is that no jumping is allowed in ice dancing and competitors should never be more than two arm lengths apart.
Pairs figure skating is a more acrobatic discipline featuring jumps, throws and lifts.
Ice dancing made its Olympic debut at the 1976 Games at Innsbruck, while pairs (and men's and women's singles) has been on the programme since 1908.
"We are just really grateful to everyone back home in Australia, everyone back home in Montreal," Chan said.
"It's amazing to share this experience with so many friends. I think this is a culmination of a lot of hard work and a reflection of our journey."
Elsewhere in the competition, Russian figure skater Adeliia Petrosian emerged as a medal contender for the Milan Games with a phenomenal performance.
The 18-year-old scored 209.63 total points for her Michael Jackson-themed short program and Saturday's Argentine tango free skate, beating Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia (206.23), and Belgium's Loena Hendrickx (204.96).
Competing as Individual Neutral Athletes, this week marked the first international competition for Russian skaters since the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
The event is the only chance Russian skaters have to secure Olympic quota spots following their exclusion from March's world championships in Boston.
In May, the ISU announced a list of Russian skaters approved to compete in Beijing: Petrosian and Alina Gorbacheva in women's singles, and men's singles skaters Gumennik and Vladislav Dikidzhi.
No pairs or ice dance teams were approved.
Gumennik showed he could be a contender for the Olympic podium after he won the final qualifying event by a 34-point margin.
Allison Reed and Saulius Ambrulevicius won the ice dance event for Lithuania.
