Sinead and John Kerr eighth after initial Olympic dance

Kerrs' compulsory dance

Sinead Kerr and John Kerr made a decent start to their Olympic figure skating campaign with the British pair ranked eighth after the compulsory dance.

The brother and sister combination scored 37.02 after the first of three dances at the Pacific Coliseum.

The competition is headed by Russian pair Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin who lead Canadian duo Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir by 1.02 points.

Brits Penny Coomes and Nicholas Buckland are well behind in 21st place.

American duo Meryl Davis and Charlie White are currently in the bronze medal position with the original dance on Sunday and the free dance on Monday still to come.

The 2006 Olympic silver medallists Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto from the US are behind their compatriots in fourth place.

The Russian world champions grabbed the judges' attention with their deft footwork and precise holds to score 43.76.

With only 6.74 points separating the top eight couples in the three-part competition, the rankings could easily change under the accumulative-points scoring system following Sunday's original dance.

For the Kerrs it was a personal best performance and they were pleased with how the opening skate went.

"It was fine, it was fun. We skated pretty good and we were pretty happy with it," said John Kerr.

"We're confident we can build on this and we're pretty tight with the two teams above us so hopefully we can have two more clean skates and see what happens."

Sinead added: "I felt pretty relaxed actually. The crowd had a really warm energy and it felt like that energy kind of poured onto the ice.

"We've been training really well leading up to this and we've got a personal best so we can't ask for more than that."