One black. One white.  On the surface, ice for these purposes, Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy would appear to be Germany’s most unlikely pair.

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Although black athletes were extremely rare in the former East Germany, Szolkowy told the New York Times before the Games that he never experienced racism or discomfort.

Tall and lean, the dark-haired Szolkowy was raised by his mother and adapted easily to German life, beginning to skate at age four before moving to Erfurt and switching to pairs as a teenager.

Szolkowy had seen pictures, but it wasn’t until 2008 at a hotel in Vienna, where his father was attending a conference, that the two actually met.

“It’s not so easy after 28 years when you meet your father,” Szolkowy told the Times. “But it is good now to have an image of him, and it was so strange and so similar. I saw my father and knew how I would look and move in 30 years.”

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