Canadian Ice Dancers Make Olympic History
I feel so lucky! I was one of 11,000 skating fans at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver to witness Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir dance their way to Olympic gold. It was an evening of perfection led by the Canadian duo whose complex, powerful and emotionally profound free dance left the audience in an awestruck, romantic haze. Virtue and Moir are the first Canadians to win Olympic gold. Even more astounding, they are only one of three non-Russian dance teams to claim gold since Ice Dance became an Olympic sport.
Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White took the silver medal with an athletic, crowd-pleasing program. With risky lifts and high-quality dance elements Davis and White were even able to breath some life into the ever-popular though woefully overused music from Phantom of the Opera.
This article captures the feeling in the arena tonight and does well to point out that the theatrical Russians laid down a solid and entertaining program, but were light on skating skills, speed and power.
Celebrating Virtue and Moir’s win in Vancouver tonight was a truly magical moment for this lifelong figure skating fan!
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Agreed! Amazing to see those skates and skaters live and in person–historic!
Great article, too. Just another look at the skaters and the people that Tessa and Scott are!
March 11th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
I wish Virtue and Moir had done their Pink Floyd program (no really, they have one!), but the one they did was wonderful. I’d also appreciate more variety in the music at these things: having the James Bond theme in the women’s skating was refreshing too.