Skip to footer

Charlie White and Meryl Davis "smoked" us, says Canada's Scott Moir

Charlie White and his teammates skated to a team bronze. Canadians took home the team bronze, and Russians took home the skating team gold

|
Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press/AP
Charlie White (r.) and Meryl Davis of the United States perform their free dance in the ice dance portion of the team figure skating event at the Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2014, in Sochi, Russia.
  • By Alissa de Carbonnel Reuters

| SOCHI, Russia

Olympic champion Scott Moir ruefully admitted he and ice dance partner Tessa Virtue "got smoked" by rivals and training mates Meryl Davis and Charlie White at the Sochi Games on Sunday.

The much-anticipated dance off between the North American rivals who have traded world championship titles since the 2010 Vancouver Games failed to materialise as Americans Davis and White obliterated the Canadians in the team competition.

Barely two months after Virtue and Moir were just fractions of points from overtaking the Americans at the Grand Prix final, Davis and White won the bragging rights by finishing almost seven points ahead in the free skate of the inaugural team competition.

"We got smoked today," Moir sighed in frustration after the free programme.

"Not even close ... It was a good skate, but the levels weren't where they needed to be."

The expected toe-to-toe between the couples who train with the same Russian coach Marina Zoueva failed to materialise when the Canadians paid the price for going out of sync in their side-by-side twizzles in the short programme.

That gap widened further after Davis and White charmed the Russian crowd at the 12,000-capacity Iceberg Skating Palace, putting Team USA on the podium when they had been lagging in the debut team competition. Russia took gold, while the Canadian team got silver.

"We sent a strong message today," White told reporters. "We're looking to try to top that record score again in the individual event, so we set the bar high."

Second chance

In a new twist for figure skating, Virtue and Moir have another shot at besting their rivals in the individual competition when they will be skating for personal rather than team glory. The Canadians intend to make the best of it.

"That is the interesting thing about this event, we are already thinking ahead to next week," Virtue said of their disappointing scores in the team competition.

She will wear a new dress for the occasion, trading the Russian imperial-style red and gold with plunging neckline styled "after a Faberge egg" for a soft-flowing pastel-coloured one.

"We're performing this programme twice and I wanted two dresses," Virtue told reporters.

"I think this one works for the end of the programme and the one I'll wear next time works for the beginning of the programme because it's pastel."

(Editing by Rex Gowar)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Charlie White and Meryl Davis
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0210/Charlie-White-and-Meryl-Davis-smoked-us-says-Canada-s-Scott-Moir
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe