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  • Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir Take Ice Dance Silver In Sochi

    Tessa Virtue and dance partner Scott Moir from Canada won silver for their performance in the ice dance event in this year’s Winter Games in Sochi. In the free dance portion, they earned 114.66 points, their best for the season. American pair Meryl Davis and Charlie White scored 116.63 points. The Canadians had an overall score of 190.99, which was not enough to best the Americans, who got 195.52 and the gold. Taking the bronze are Elena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsapalov of Russia, who scored 183.58 overall.

    Virtue and Moir are two-time world champions, and are Davis and White’s training partners. Both teams are top contenders in ice dancing, capturing international ice dance titles left and right. The Canadians won the event in the 2010 Winter Olympics, with the Americans getting silver. Last year, the Americans began edging out Virtue and Moir, winning the Grand Prix Final in December and the 2013 world title.

    Aside from being training partners, the two teams also share the same coach, Marina Zoueva. When you have one coach for two rival teams, things could get a little dicey.

    In an interview, Moir stated that there had been times when he and Virtue did not feel like Zoueva was on their side. He expected Zoueva to work with them like she did four years ago, but that didn’t transpire. The pair said they knew why their coach spent most of her time with the other team, but there had been differences that the Canadians had to fix on their own.

    Moir confessed that there had been occasions when he and Virtue had to reassess where they stood with Zoueva, and had spoken to her on numerous occasions to say that they would not be satisfied with second place. They had some unusual things happen in the past year and felt that the gold medal was being pulled away from their reach.

    Virtue and Moir have not announced their plans for the future, but stated this would be the last time they would be joining the Olympics.

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  • Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue: Coach is to Blame

    Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue lost their chance at a gold medal in ice dancing to their rivals and training mates Meryl Davis and Charlie White. So, what’s next for the duo?

    Finger pointing, apparently. And the person at the focus of the pointing finger is the trainer of both couples and former soviet ice dancer, Marina Zoueva.

    Moir and Virtue say they believe part of the reason they lost to Davis and White is because the coach had become more focused on the American team, according to AFP.

    As the Americans began to pass the pair up in skill and accomplishment, they say she slowly began to focus more on White and Davis. Which seems to have paid off for the US, now that we have our first ice dancing gold to add to the list. Of course it wasn’t just the training. White and Davis can also attribute their success to the comfort of a seventeen year working relationship and unebbing support from their moms.

    “We were both pretty blunt with her in the fall and leading up to the Olympics. We weren’t happy and we felt that sometimes she wasn’t in our corner,” Moir said of Zoueva. “We went to Marina on countless occasions and told her there was no way we would be happy with the silver medal. We’ve had some odd things happen this year that haven’t happened before. We expected that Marina would march with us and be on our team like she was in Vancouver … she wasn’t.”

    One of those odd things Moir spoke of was Marina’s glaring absence at the couple’s national championship competition. However, when a coach has two really great teams on her hands, what is she to do?

    Moir admitted, “She’s not in any easy position. My Mom’s a figure skating coach and she always says to me ‘you know she (Zoueva) can’t win no matter what’ … well you know she does win no matter what.”

    “There’s always an angry set of parents and an angry set of skaters out there so she has a hard job.”

    The Canadian duo was quick to say that they weren’t displeased with their silver medal in ice dancing, ”We couldn’t have asked for more about our performances,” Virtue said. ”It’s nice to be satisfied and content with our job. We’ve managed to create the Olympic moment.”

    What does the future hold for Moir and Virtue? Well, retirement is expected, but they haven’t confirmed or denied that yet.

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