ST. LOUIS — There’s a lot of things that can go wrong in figure skating. But what happens when it’s not your fault?
That’s what happened to the ice dance pair of Raffaella Koncius and Alexey Shchepetov, who weathered a music blunder that stopped them midway through of their rhythm dance at the 2026 U.S. figure skating championships on Thursday.
About two minutes into their program, there seemed to be an odd transition of their music — a Ricky Martin song — inside the Enterprise Center. Koncius and Shchepetov noticed the difference immediately.
“We just were doing our thing, and then I think we just heard some extra music started playing,” Shchepetov told reporters. “We figured we would just keep going, and hopefully they would just fade out the other music, but it just kept going and going. So then they just called us to stop it.”
Koncius added that by the time the stoppage occurred, they “couldn’t even hear our music anymore.”
The pair skated over to the judges table to work out the confusion, which resulted in about a five-minute delay. The music started once again, but not at the correct part of the program, so the pair spoke with the judges again.
The crowd was cheering on Koncius and Shchepetov, something they said really helped them during an odd time. Shchepetov said the music mix-up happened just as they were about to do their midline step sequence, so the officials gave them the opportunity to complete it entirely, giving them about a 15-second leeway.
It’s not necessarily a situation skaters think about when they’re competing, but Koncius and Shchepetov felt a little prepared for the scenario of having to suddenly stop and pick right back up in the middle of a performance.
“When we train, we do a lot of where we kind of train similarly, like that,” Shchepetov said. “Like not with the music cutting off and whatnot, but we’ll train like one section, you rest while the music plays, and then you just pick it up for our next section.”
“We train these sections all the time so we know how to pick it up when something like this happens,” Koncius added.
The pair were able to resume their program without another issue, finishing with a score 65.15.
Even though it may have been a little chaotic, Koncius and Shchepetov were all smiles about the entire situation.
“Made for a great experience, truly,” Koncius said. “And a good story, too.”
