Virtue and Moir: “We are taking it all in”
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir re-exerted their dominance of the sport of ice dance with two powerhouse performances en route to their seventh Skate Canada International title. Teammates Kaetlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje took the silver, while USA’s Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue earned the bronze.
Virtue and Moir set a new world record in the short dance (82.68) and total combined scores (199.86). Their free dance score (117.18) was a mere .02 points off their personal best from the 2017 Four Continents Championships. In total, the team scored 29 perfect tens in component scores from the short and free dances.
The seven-time Canadian Champions took command of the competition with their world-record scoring short dance set to nineties rock music.
“We don’t have a choice, we know who we are competing against,” Moir said after the short dance of their need for a big score. “We want to win this competition. We know that Kaitlyn and Andrew will bring their A-Game, they always do. We train with Maddy and Zach, so we knew we had to post a score like that in order to be on top.”
The 2010 Olympic Champions sported new sleek costumes for their free dance to Moulin Rouge; Virtue in a backless form-fitting burgundy dress and Moir in deep grey. “It’s sort of a natural evolution in the costuming of this program,” Virtue explained. “We wanted to start the pre-season at Autumn Classic very character-driven and character-based; really based off the movie, with Satine and Christian, and I think then shift to a bit more of a contemporary look that hopefully shows off the lines and the specific movement. Moulin Rouge with a twist.”
“It went quite well,” Virtue said of the free dance, which featured dramatic lift entries with Virtue leaping upon Moir before the rotation. “We had a couple bobbles on one of our footworks, but overall, I liked our attack and I think we recovered really well and that’s a testament to our training.”
“I’d like to think this is our last one and we are really taking it all in,” Moir said of the team’s final showing at Skate Canada International.
“It’s a nice confidence boost,” Virtue said of the scores. “We know exactly where those improvements need to be made and there’s no reason why we can’t have that at NHK. It’s validation that we are on the right track. We are in a very secure place.”
“We’d love to have a perfect score sheet at the Olympic Games and that’s a goal of ours,” Moir added of this scoring stepping stone.
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