The Globe and Mail
February 23, 2010

Virtue and Moir make history with ice dance gold

It seems that Canadian ice dancers in the past could have used a loonie buried at centre ice when it came to the Olympics.

Not Monday night. It wasn't about luck.

Tessa Virtue of London, Ont., and Scott Moirof Ilderton, Ont., dazzled the judges and carved out a little history for themselves by becoming the first Canadians - and the first North Americans - to win an Olympic gold medal in ice dancing.

The only ice dancing medal ever won by a Canadian came from the team of Tracy Wilson and Robert McCall, who won bronze the last time the Olympics came to town - 22 years ago in Calgary.

"I was a little bit concerned coming in that it was becoming a curse,'' said Wilson, who is working here as a commentator for NBC. She remembered Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz in 2002 at Salt Lake City, falling in the final moments of their free dance and sliding off the podium. Wilson felt they could have won a medal.

Then there was Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon who fell on a lift in the original dance at the Turin Olympics four years ago. Dubreuil had to be carried off the ice and they were forced to withdraw. Wilson felt that they had put themselves in a position to win a medal then, too.

"I've done so many Olympics, you just know to expect the unexpected,'' she said.

Only one French team and one British team have broken a Soviet or Russian stronghold on Olympic ice dancing since it came into the Olympic fold in 1976.

Now there is one Canadian team. And what a team they are.

"I'm proud of ice dancing tonight,'' said Gwendal Peizerat of France, who along with Marina Anissina, was one of the teams that broke the stronghold. The other was Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. "It was probably one of the greatest ice dancing competitions I've seen," he added referring to the fact that it was well judged.

Virtue and Moir made their own luck. They won with a score of 221.57 points, the second-highest ice dancing point total in history. At ages 20 and 22, they are also the youngest Olympic ice dancing champions in history.
Their training mates, U.S. champions Meryl Davisand Charlie White won the silver medal with 215.74 points. The reigning world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin of Russia won the bronze with 207.64.

"It's been such a journey, and so many people have helped us along the way," Virtue said.

"Oh my god," Moir said. "It's an exceptional moment that we've always dreamed of. It's everything we've ever wanted and we couldn't be happier."
The crowd roared when the Canadians got the win, and cheered wildly when they stood on the podium. Moir took a breathless look at the scene around him, held up the medal and kissed it.

At Moir's home, fans took over the Ilderton Community Centre beside the rink where Moir began to skate for both the original dance and the free dance, sold 350 tickets at $2 a pop and watched the milestone victory.
"Tessa and Scott are so incredibly talented and we see that on a daily basis," Davis said in defeat. "We're so proud of them."

William Thompson, chief executive officer of Skate Canada, said Virtue and Moir's free dance was the best he's ever seen, "hands down."

He says he remembers watching 1984 Olympic champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean as a child. "It was amazing,'' he said. "I think for me, this has taken me back to seeing Torvill and Dean when I was a kid.''

He said the death of the mother of Joannie Rochette did not deter them, but it may have had the reverse effect on their performance "of saying that they're going to do it to inspire Jo," Thompson said.

But history isn't the only thing the expressive Canadians were making. They're swiftly and surely becoming one of the icons of the sport, and they may outstrip all others. There's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing in Sochi four years hence.

Although they have not won a world title yet and are only 20 and 22 years old, they're already being compared to the Torvill and Dean, who have served as the benchmark for all ice dancers since they won Olympic gold in 1984.

Ask Canadian coach Ellen Burka, who knows all about high-level skating and she won't even compare them to the British legends. "I don't care," she said. "Torvill and Dean had a little different style. They were good, but the music was not interesting. [Bolero, their free dance music at the 1984 Olympics] is boring."

Virtue and Moir are "the best I've seen for a long time," Burka said. Their long program, to Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony is perfection and the music is beautiful, Burka said. "I'm quite familiar with Mahler," she said. "They really move to it."

She said Mahler is difficult to skate to, because it's very serious music and most dancers would prefer to skate with more punchy, uplifting music "with little hop steps," she said.

The 1980 Olympic champion Robin Cousins, who skated for Great Britain goes further. A BBC commentator here, he said on air that Virtue and Moir have the potential to make people not remember who Torvill and Dean were.

It's about time, he said, that a dance team has finally stepped up to capture the imagination of the public. There have been excellent dancers since Torvill and Dean, but they don't remain in the memory.

According to Cousins, Virtue and Moir are a perfect combination of Olympic pair champions Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov and Torvill and Dean.

On Monday night, Cousins said Virtue and Moir were "breathtaking."
"I'm privileged to have been in the building to see that," he said. "They have found their own Bolero [the Olympic routine of Torvill and Dean. It was exquisite."

In fact, out of all the music Virtue and Moir could have chosen for their original dance to Spanish flamenco, they chose the exact same music used by Gordeeva and Grinkov, according to Marina Zoueva, who served as the choreographer for both.

Canadian silver medalists Vanessa Crone of Aurora, Ont., and Paul Poirier of Unionville, Ont., hope to follow in the footsteps of Virtue and Moir all the way to the Sochi Olympics in four years.

"I think we've definitely learned a lot from competing here," Poirier said. "We've showed ourselves that we can compete on the Olympic stage, that we're ready to do this. So the next four years, we have a lot of time to grow.

"We have a lot of things going for us. We have a great team. We're just really going to work and work. We've seen what the top teams are doing and we have four years now to master that and hopefully be at the top of the podium in Sochi.''

They may have a fight on their hands.