Love, teamwork and sometimes rivalry intertwine at Winter Olympics

Feb 13 : Love is in the air at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics where a number of couples bring an added level of chemistry to the competition. Here are some of the couples competing with or against each other at the Games:

CURLING

Three couples competed in curling's mixed doubles event that ended on Tuesday. They all walked away without a medal, with each pair losing five out of nine games in the round-robin stages.

* Norway's Magnus Nedregotten and Kristin Skaslien, a couple since 2011, won bronze at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018 and silver in Beijing in 2022. The pair, who have competed together since 2012, got married in 2019.

* Canada's Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant have said the introduction of mixed doubles into Olympics was the spark that started their relationship as they paired up in 2016 after it was announced that the event would be included in Pyeongchang 2018. They have been married for four years.

* In their final game, the Canadians beat another couple - Switzerland's Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann who got married in 2022 and have competed internationally as a doubles pair since 2023. Their one-year-old son, River, was an avid spectator at the Games, where he grabbed a curling broom and swept along the sidelines.

FIGURE SKATING

* U.S. ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates won silver in the individual event on Wednesday and took home gold from the team competition, having placed first in both their programmes during that event. They have competed in every Olympics since Sochi 2014 but Milano Cortina was their first Games as a married couple. The couple live and train in Montreal and were married in Hawaii in June 2024.

* Competing in their fourth Olympics, Italian ice dancers