Allison Reed recently finished sixth overall in the ice dance event at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. She had returned to the quadrennial event after 16 long years, having last participated at the 2010 edition in Vancouver.
Despite being born in the United States, the American skater has represented three nations in her nearly 2-decade career. After representing Georgia and Israel between 2009 and 2015, the 31-year-old ice dancer now competes for Lithuania with ice dance partner Saulius Ambrulevičius.
Allison Reed’s Incredible Journey in a Nutshell Ft. Saulius Ambrulevičius
America-born Allison Reed participated alongside Saulius Ambrulevičius from Team Lithuania in the ice dance category at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
Despite maintaining consistency, the ice dancing duo couldn’t gain enough points to clinch a podium finish. The duo finished sixth overall, while the French duo Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron went on to win the gold medal.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates won their first Olympic medal in the pairs category as they clinched the silver medal, followed by Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier from Canada, who clinched the bronze medal.
Now Reed has been skating since the age of three. The 31-year-old ice dancer belongs to an illustrious family of figure skaters, with her siblings, Catherine Reed and Chris Reed, having represented Japan at multiple international events, including the Winter Olympics.
Reed first teamed up with Otar Japaridze, who is a Georgian ice dancer. The couple represented Georgia together from 2009 to 2011, including at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Reed then switched her allegiance to Israel, where she teamed up with Vasili Rogov. The ice dance duo represented the country from 2012 to 2015, after which Reed sought other options. It was then that she met Saulius Ambrulevičius, although her first impression of him wasn’t too nice.
In 2014, Reed witnessed Ambrulevičius for the first time at the Tallinn Trophy, when she was still partnered with Rogov. Reed later described her first impression of the Lithuanian ice dancer, as she mentioned in a later interview with Olympics.com,
“I remember asking my sister. I was like, ‘Who is that?’. She’s like, ‘Oh, it’s this new couple that’s skating for Lithuania’, and I was like, ‘Oh, that guy is not very good at all’.”
Little did the ice dancer imagine she would team up with Ambrulevičius to win multiple championships in less than two years. The Lithuanian’s ice dancing partner, Taylor Tran, was injured at that time, and the then 23-year-old Reed was slowly returning to figure skating after having broken up with her previous ice dancing partner, Rogov.
The American-born ice dancer further revealed in the interview how destiny made the two dancers team up,
“We started skating together just for fun. I was trying to get my legs back under me because I had quit for about 2 years and hadn’t skated for 2 years. And so, it was super fun that Saul wanted to entertain me for a little bit.
We got along so well from the start. We had common interests, and we were just laughing all of the time and really enjoyed skating together, and when he asked me to be his partner, it was like, ‘That’s a silly question, of course!’”
However, the two ice dancers began representing Lithuania in 2018, and they won five consecutive Lithuanian Championships from 2018 to 2022. Their bond as a skating duo grew even stronger in 2020, when the American-born ice dancer faced the loss of her brother Chris Reed, who had passed away due to cardiac arrest.
She described how Ambrulevičius stood tall as a pillar of support to her and eventually helped her get back on track.
In November 2024, Allison Reed received Lithuanian citizenship from President Gitanas Nauseda. Reed took the oath of allegiance at the Lithuanian embassy in Canada. The same year, Reed and her partner Ambrulevičius won the bronze medal at the European Championships.
