Beijing 2022: When and where to watch figure skating pairs at the Winter Olympics

"This pairs free skate is going to be the best ever."

Those were the words of 1998 gold medallist Tara Lipinski on NBC Sports on Friday during the pairs skating short program. The final figure skating event at the Winter Olympic Games Beijing 2022 will come to a thrilling conclusion on Saturday 19 February.

After the short program, which took place on Friday at the Capital Indoor Stadium, People's Republic of China's Sui Wenjing and Han Cong have the lead with a score of 84.41.

They are followed closely by three ROC teams: Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov (84.25), Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov (82.76), and Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii (78.59).

The pairs competition was expected to be a fairly open affair, especially given the retirement of reigning Olympic champions Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot (GER) and it has lived up to that expectation. This will go down to the wire, and you won't want to miss it. We bring you everything you need to know ahead of a can't-miss finale.

China's Sui Wenjing and Han Cong were expected to be frontrunners for the Beijing 2022 title and so far they have lived up to that title. The 2018 Olympic silver medalists and two-time world champions (2017, 2019) are certainly among the favourites to go one better this time around and win the gold.

The hosts can also be proud of Peng Cheng and Jin Yang, who currently sit in fifth place after an impressive short program routine.

Mishina and Galliamov, the 2021 world champions, will run Sui and Han all the way in an effort to win gold on their Olympic Winter Games debut. They are the current European champions and scored the highest total in the pairs free skating in the team event earlier in Beijing 2022.

However,