Milan 

Of all of the extreme Winter Olympic events, pairs skating might just be the most insane.

The entire discipline hinges on a man either throwing a woman into the air or holding her over his head. It’s fraught enough to try such a handsy, dangerous, co-dependent activity with a friend or sibling.

The top Italian pair is doing it as exes.

Sara Conti and Niccolò Macii were both elite skaters when they became a couple. Then they formed a pairs partnership. They dated for four and a half years, doing all the things that serious couples do, while also working together very, very closely. But when the relationship hit that fatal stage, they broke up. Then they immediately went right back to skating together.

The former couple has been so good as a just-colleagues pair that Italy won Olympic bronze in the figure skating team event at the Milan Games last week. Now, they’re chasing more hardware in the pairs competition on Monday.

Whether or not they win another medal, Conti and Macii have already earned one distinction. They’ve proven themselves to be the most outwardly functional exes in Italy.

“We know each other as dating, not dating, happy and unhappy,” he said in a joint interview with his Olympic partner. “So we basically know each other 360.”

“The mindset is the same,” she added. “On the ice, we just want to work together.”

But in 2023, she decided they should no longer be together. Just days before their first world championships, Conti knew the timing of the split wasn’t ideal. But all along, they had promised each other that as long as the partnership worked inside the rink, they would stick with it no matter what happened outside.

They still had no idea how terrible it could be to spend hours of every day with their ex.

“Normally, it’s like years, or at least months, that you don’t want to see that person,” Macii said.

In their case, it wasn’t just seeing. It was also touching, clutching and working with their faces inches apart.

“You need to show people that you’re fine,” Macii said. “But you’re not.”

At first, they faked it. With their breakup still fresh, they somehow managed to win a medal at worlds. A month later, a team event forced the exes to sit together while cheering on the other Italians. Macii just wanted to hide in a dark room.

The next year of training was awful, and their results dipped. They stuck by each other to chase the one thing they couldn’t divvy up: their dream of skating at the Olympics.

Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Figure Skating – Team Event – Pair Skating – Short Program – Milano Ice Skating Arena, Milan, Italy – February 06, 2026. Sara Conti of Italy and Niccolo Macii of Italy perform during the pair skating REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Strangely, the intimate nature of their sport was never a problem, Macii said. No matter where they had to put their hands on each other, none of it was awkward. They were both too focused on keeping their balance.

To Macii, pairs skating isn’t remotely sexual. It’s entirely about physics.

“When I lift her, it becomes a mannequin for me, and for her the same,” he said. “For Sara, it’s like being seated on a chair.”

“I don’t know how to explain the feeling,” Conti said. “For me, [being held] here or there, there’s no difference.”

She said she never stopped trusting him not to drop her. He didn’t believe her. The sports psychologist they saw, together and individually, pointed out that they obviously cared about each other. Even if they were fighting, he concluded, they should at least try to keep skating and see where it took them.

“It’s big work…changing the way you talk to each other,” said Macii. “Nobody is happy after a breakup, so you know, you need to find a way to see from another point of view.”

A year after their breakup, things started getting better. Once they no longer had an off-ice relationship at stake, they could resume their normal on-ice bickering:

Sara, please close your legs, because otherwise you kick me in the face. 

Nic, please shut your mouth. 

“We explain better, and normally we find the solution,” Macii said. “If we don’t find it, then we get like: OK, see you tomorrow, bye bye.”

The next day, Conti said, she often couldn’t remember what they were fighting about.

In the lead-up to the Olympics, they were back among the three best pairs in the world. Both are in new relationships with other skaters. Separating their work lives from their love lives has paid off.

“I want to go home, and I don’t want to think about the work,” she said.

“We were always talking about figure skating,” he said.

Now that he’s engaged to someone else, he realizes that Conti and Macii weren’t meant to be a couple—only a pair.

Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com