Detroit's ice dancers, speed skaters compete this weekend

Metro Detroit has 15 ice dance teams competing in the Winter Olympics

Metro Detroit athletes will be busy this weekend competing on the ice in Sochi, Russia.

Saturday Jessica Smith of Melvindale will compete in her second race, the 1500 meter short track event in the Adler Ice Arena.     

She hopes to improve upon her performance earlier this week in the 500 meter event.   The 30-year-old wiped out during the first round and failed to qualify.   

She competes in her third race, the 1000 meters, on Friday, Feb. 21.

Sunday starts off the ice dance competition inside the Iceberg Ice Palace.

Meryl Davis and Charlie White will be competing for the gold medal in their second Olympic games.  They won the silver medal during the Vancouver games in 2010.

Their training mates, Maia and Alex Shibutani, a brother-sister team out of Ann Arbor, will make their Olympic debut.  So will Evan Bates and Madison Chock, who train at the Skating Club of Novi.

Several other international ice teams that train in metro Detroit will also be competing, including Davis and White's biggest rivals, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada.  Virtue and Moir, who train with Davis and White in Canton, won gold during the Winter Games in 2010.

The Detroit Skating Club has two Canadian ice dance teams competing;  Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, and Alexandra Paul and Mitchell Islam.   Danielle O'Brien and Greg Merriman of Australia also train at DSC.

The Skating Club of Novi has eight international teams competing in addition to Chock and Bates: Nathalie Pechalat, Fabian Bourzat -- French National Champions

Isabella Tobias, Deividas Stagniunas - Lithuania National Champions
Julia Zlobina, Alexei Sitnikov - Azerbaijan
Anna Cappellini, Luca Lanotte - Italy National Champions
Cathy Reed, Chris Reed - Japan
Nelli Zhiganshina, Alexander Gazsi - Germany
Charlene Guiguard, Marco Fabbri - Italy
Pernelle Carron, Lloyd Jones - France

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Chock and Bates