When siblings compete in the same sport, there can be all kinds of fallout -- from bruises to bruised egos. Yet siblings make Winter Olympic teams together all the time: Eric and Beth Heiden in speed skating in 1976 and 1980; Phil and Steve Mahre in ski racing in 1976, 1980 and 1984; and Amanda and Phil Kessel in ice hockey in 2014, for example.
At least five more family pairs are likely to compete for the U.S. this February in Pyeongchang. But there could have been so many more. Why do they split? Those stories are rarely told. So we caught up with two cases of siblings who pushed each other -- as well as Becca and Matt Hamilton, who won the U.S. Olympic trials in mixed doubles curling and who, for the first time, revealed their secret method to avoid throttling each other on the ice.
The Mancusos, skiing
Ski racer Julia Mancuso spent her youth chasing her older sister, April, down the steep, powdery chutes of Squaw Valley, California, and credits those hair-raising forays for her early success. April went on to make the U.S. ski team in the late '90s but, by 2000, Julia was beating her easily at nationals and the junior world championships.
During their two-year overlap on the team, Julia said, "The pros were having an older sister to look up to, and the cons were her not talking to me anymore when I beat her for the first time -- but when I beat everyone on the U.S. ski team, she decided it was OK."
The silent treatment lasted about four days, according to April, who left the team in 2000 when she was recruited to race for the University of Utah.
"I really wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist," said April, now 37, a mother of two, and an osteopathic doctor in northern California. But April had also seen members of the U.S. team spend 10 years on the World Cup tour with only middling results. "I felt like that's probably where I was going to end up," she said.
"When she quit," Julia said, "I got very lonely," but the sisters became stars on their own circuits. At the 2002 NCAA championships, April placed second in giant slalom the same year that Julia made her Olympic debut. Four years later, Julia won an Olympic gold medal in that event. April had just graduated from Utah at the time and wasn't starting medical school until August, so she spent that whole winter driving Julia's RV from race to race and assisted her at the Torino Games.
In Torino, the reunited Mancusos had a rollicking time despite a series of fiascos -- such as short-circuiting an Italian hotel while trying to recharge their vehicle, and annoying U.S. teammates Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves with their solution: a noisy, gas-guzzling generator that required refueling every four hours. Looking back on those moments, April said, "It would have been so cool to have kept skiing with her. But there was never any jealousy. The second I decided to transition and go to college, that made it easy."
If Julia makes her fifth Olympic team, April, for one, will be cheering full-on.
Update: On Jan. 19, Julia Mancuso announced she would be retiring, ending her bid for the 2018 Olympic team.
The Hubbells, ice dancing
The competitive dynamic changes, of course, when siblings compete on the same team with a shared goal, as in ice dancing. Madison Hubbell spent 11 years skating with her older brother Keiffer. "My parents let him switch from gymnastics to skating and when I needed a partner, they paid him behind my back. Yeah, they paid him a monthly allowance of $50 -- and I didn't find out for years!" she said.
But the partnership worked. Training with Keiffer, she said, was "super easy because we're very close and we have very similar ways of working. And, honestly, he's so easygoing. He let me take the boss-lady role."
After a standout junior career that included two medals at the ISU Junior Grand Prix final and the 2008 U.S. national junior title, they took a senior-level bronze at the 2010 ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships.
With age, however, the Hubbells' stylistic and physical differences began to contrast sharply. "People thought the way I skated was more sexy and flirtatious," Madison said. "And that doesn't work very well with a brother-sister team."
Also, tricks became difficult since Keiffer was thin and only 15 pounds heavier than Madison, who had more muscle mass. Keiffer, she said, also began to struggle in the spotlight. "He was really nervous when we competed. So I kept getting stronger and liking it more and more and he was growing farther away from the performance aspect. Inevitably, that's what pushed us to make a decision."
One day, between training sessions, Keiffer said through tears, "Maddy, I can't do it anymore."
"I was devastated," Madison said, "But I didn't want him to keep going if he didn't love it."
So on May 12, 2011, they split. Madison had long said that she would never skate with anyone but her brother. "At that moment," she said, "I had to decide whether or not that was true."
When Zach Donohue showed up at the rink, she wasn't interested, but their coaches made them try. "It worked right away," Madison said. In 2012, they earned a bronze medal at the U.S. national championships, then placed third each of the last three years as well. Last week, the pair won the 2018 U.S. national title, cementing their spot on the Olympic team as well.
When Keiffer saw Madison succeed in her first season with Donohue, he returned to competition with Anastasia Olson and, suddenly, the Hubbell siblings were rivals at the 2013 U.S. nationals. Madison placed fourth there, while Keiffer placed seventh and retired again shortly thereafter.
Once her brother was out of the sport, Madison, 26, said, "Our narrative didn't have to be skating anymore -- and we had double as much to talk about. I wanted to talk about skating and he was pursuing yoga intently, so we talked about his yoga. Now he's going back to school to get a nursing degree. He's got his own life now. It's kind of cool. On Skype, he'll teach me yoga and provide that little outlet for me because he knows I need it. We always have been and always will be really close."
The Hamiltons, curling
Even the close-knit curling siblings Rebecca and Matt Hamilton had to come up with a "safe word" to keep them from bickering on the ice in mixed doubles. Nobody else knows the word, not even their coach.
"It's not an adjective or a noun," Rebecca said. "It's a stupid word, a silly word from a cartoon that my brother knew; I had never even heard of it. Matt says it when he's standing right next to me. It means: all right, drop it, we're moving on. As much as I have to bite my tongue when he says the word, it works!"
As for any brother-sister advantage ... "The big separator between good and great teams," Matt Hamilton, 28, said, "is how well you communicate. As siblings, we don't sugarcoat anything. When you're just playing with someone you know, you tend to be nicer."
Rebecca, 27, agrees. "My brother is my hardest critic."
"But I grew up with her," Matt said, "Whether [the advice] sounds good or not, she's still going to be my sister at the end of the day."
