Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada perform during the ice dance compulsory dance event at the World Figure Skating Championships in Turin on Tuesday.MAX ROSSI/Reuters
New Olympic ice dancing champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have had enough of compulsory dances.
On Tuesday, they won the compulsory dance at the world figure skating championships, performing the toughest and longest one of all - the Golden Waltz - and almost exulting in the fact that it could be the last compulsory dance ever held at a high-level skating competition.
In June, at the International Skating Union congress, delegates will probably vote to get rid of the compulsory dance exactly 20 years after singles skating shed its compulsory figures.
"We're not really holding our breath to see what the rule changes are,'' Moir said. "But that's the way it has to be in our opinion. We think it's a little outdated. We don't think the results really speak true, when they come out after the compulsory dance.
Moir said he didn't think the Olympic compulsory dance result in Vancouver was "accurate."
Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin won the compulsory dance at the Vancouver Olympics, and Moir said yesterday that they shouldn't have.
Domnina and Shabalin have bypassed the world championships in favour of doing a skating tour in Russia.
Various international judges canvassed by The Globe and Mail didn't believe Domnina and Shabalin should have won the Olympic compulsory dance, a tango romantica. The Golden Waltz performed yesterday would have been even harder on Shabalin's gimpy knees, some say.
Other judges said during the Olympics that it's a bad sign for ice dancing that the Russians placed in the top four or five for the original dance and free dance at the Games. Yet, they won the bronze medal.
Yesterday, Charlie White, the U.S. champion who skates with Meryl Davis, said he'd be glad to see the compulsory dance disappear because "what you do on the ice and what happens on the scoreboard are often two very different things,'' he said. "And that seems especially to be the case with compulsory dances.''
Moir said he would have had Davis and White ahead of the Russians in the compulsory dance at the Olympics. Virtue and Moir finished second to the Russians in Olympic compulsories, 1.02 points behind, while Davis and White were third, 1.27 points further behind the Canadians.
Davis and White ended up winning the Olympic silver medal in Vancouver, but they felt the quixotic nature of ice dancing judging at the 2009 world championships in Los Angeles - in their own back yard.
At that event, Davis and White finished fourth and off the podium behind Domnina and Shabalin, who won their only world title. Virtue and Moir were third, only .04 points ahead of the Americans. Many were mystified by the Russian win last year. Some thought Davis and White deserved that win.
"Last year we felt really good about the way we skated in all portions of the competition, and as far as the results go, people always kind of talk to us about last year's worlds but it was last year," Davis said. "Here we are, and we're happy to be here."
Yesterday, Virtue, of London, Ont., and Moir, of Ilderton, Ont., won the difficult Golden Waltz with 44.13 points, while Davis and White earned 43.25 points, only .88 behind.
They did it in front of Sergei Ponomarenko, working here as a technical specialist. Ponomarenko and his wife Marina Klimova created the Golden Waltz as an original dance when they competed a couple of decades ago, eventually becoming Olympic champions. Ponomarenko leaned forward in his seat as Virtue and Moir skated it.
'It was a little intimidating," Moir said, of Ponomarenko's presence.
In third place are Italians Federica Faiella and Massimo Scali with 40.85 points. They were second to Domnina and Shabalin at the European championships, just before the Olympic Games.
Canadian silver medalists Vanessa Crone, of Aurora, Ont., and Paul Poirier, of Unionville, Ont., are in ninth place, an encouraging finish, considering that they had never competed with the Golden Waltz before. They spent three weeks after the Olympics learning it.
Currently, Virtue and Moir and Crone and Poirier are in good position to earn Canada three teams for the world championships next year in Japan, but there is still a long way to go: original dance and free dance.
The finish position of both can't add up to more than 13 points to allow Canada three for next year. If Virtue and Moir were to win, for example, Crone and Poirier would secure three spots if they finished 12th or better. This season, Canada had only two dance entries at the Olympics and here.
Crone and Poirier were 14th at the Olympic Games, but three teams ranked ahead of them are not competing here.
Crone and Poirier said they would be disappointed to see compulsories go, because it's one of their favourite things to do. They randomly practise various compulsories during the season to keep up their edge quality and quickness. They had already played around with the Golden Waltz last year.
The Golden Waltz really separates the good teams from the bad, Crone said.
British champions Sinead and John Kerr say they're sorry to see compulsories go, because they're just getting good at them. They finished sixth yesterday in the dance and said they were surprised that Virtue and Moir are happy to be rid of them because they are "a dancey couple" and their compulsories helped them finish third at the world championships last year.
Both Virtue and Moir and Davis and White say the compulsories are holding back ice dancing, and that they spend more time training them than they are worth.
Virtue said they spend two hours a day training compulsory dances, partly because they have two to train for each season. Without them, they'd have more time to train their other routines. Moir said they have spent 50 per cent of their time training a dance they hadn't done since they competed with it in France in October.
Davis said all the time spent training compulsories keeps them from pushing the envelope of dance. "We've always been trying to push the athleticism of the sport,'' she said.
White said they end up spending more time training two compulsory dances than they do on the portions of the competition that are worth more.
Others are concerned that skaters will miss the foundation of ice dancing if the compulsories are voted out of existence. If they go, they should keep them for developing skaters, Moir said.