Gold medalists Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea get big welcome home in Colorado: "You sacrifice so much to get to that moment"

Olympic City's newest celebrities are back home in Colorado with new hardware. Just weeks after competing at the Games, Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea are already back on the ice and others at the rink are eager to see them.

"We're back to normal training, getting prepped for Worlds in a month. And it's nice to be back to normal," Kam said.

Their last month has been anything but normal as they represented Team USA in Milan and took home the gold in the team event.

"How did it feel stepping on the Olympic ice?" Your Reporter Sarah Horbacewicz asked.

Kam explained, "It was very emotional, for sure."

O'Shea added, "You sacrifice so much to get to that moment ... to hear the crowd get so loud that we can't even hear the music coming out of the speakers in that moment, it was, incredible."

But Kam and O'Shea's path to the Olympics wasn't always clear. When the pair first started working together almost four years ago, O'Shea was working in real estate and coming out of retirement from the sport.

The next few years weren't without setbacks either, but each time the pair persevered. The duo even earned a historic Olympic spot when O'Shea competed on a broken foot.

"My broken foot, that then had a surgery, and then I had a second surgery on a sports hernia, and then Ellie had an injury," O'Shea said.

Kam adding, "It was just like baby steps and just trusting that we were going to be ready when we needed to be."

And when it came down to the Olympic team event, they were ready. Not only did the duo skate with clear joy throughout, but they finished with a season-best score.

Describing the end of that skate O'Shea said, "I think we both just screamed at the top of our lungs, too. That was kind of the only way to let whatever emotion I was feeling in that moment out. But then, honestly, it shifts to so much gratitude to be out there with this one [Kam] and to be experiencing it."

After serving as an alternate during the 2018 Olympics in Korea, O'Shea never thought he would make it to the Games again. Now he says, that makes this opportunity even more special.

"It's something that you work your whole life towards," O'Shea said.

And while Kam and O'Shea's pairs events left them off the podium, both skaters say they have no regrets and gave everything they had. The two said before the Games they had discussed wanting to bring the joy viewers saw to every performance, and they did that-- and it doesn't hurt leaving with a team gold.

"You sacrifice so much to get to that moment, and you want to imagine it before you can get there, but you can't. Like, this is something that you can only feel when you're there," Kam said.

Now back home, duo keeps that reminder of gold close as they celebrate alongside their Colorado community.

"I know your parents were ecstatic and so happy." O'Shea said to Kam, "And to see my mom, like I think she cried for three days straight after we brought home the medal."

Kam also shared her gratitude for the strong support American skaters have received this year and explained, "That's like the ultimate goal for us, like we really work so hard to put emotion into our skating, so that, you know, even if not everything's perfect ... we can move people through our art."

The pair will compete in the Figure Skating World Championships in Prague later this month before each planning a well-deserved vacation "somewhere warm," Kam hopes.

Skating fans in the United States will have a chance to watch Kam and O'Shea perform together on the ice this spring as they join the Stars on Ice tour across the country.

As for his advice to any young skaters, O'Shea says, "You fall quite a bit but that's a part of life. Just keep getting back up and get to that experience of flying because once you feel that, you won't be able to give it up."